Monday, June 12, 2000

We rode 27 miles today, from Thompson Falls MT to Plains MT. The sky was dark and we did get a few sprinkles. If we went to the next motel (Lakeside MT) it would have been a 90+-mile day. Both of our legs were hurting from the hard climbing yesterday. Therefore, we took a ½ day of rest, giving us time to do laundry and other chores.

Riding from Thompson Falls to Plains was through a valley between two mountains. The scenery was typical Western Mountain spectacular. We saw mountains on one side of the valley that rose up and contained no vegetation while the mountains on the other side of the valley were covered with trees. The bare mountains were home to mountain sheep. At this time of the year, a roadside display stated that the sheep would of moved to the higher elevations. During the winter they come down to lower elevations to feed on vegetation. Our route ran alongside the Burlington railroad tracks that were under repair. We did get to see a long freight train pass.