Day 11: Rolling around the Beartooth

Title Glossary: 

Rollers is the term for an undulating road with short steep climbs and descents where the Puncheur cyclist can leave his buddies in the dust, heh heh.

The Beartooth Mountains form a barrier on the north east side of Yellowstone. To get from Montana to Wyoming you have to either go over them or around them.

One of the things I learned at the Museum of the Beartooths yesterday evening (see photos of old stuff in yesterday's post) was that the indigenous people we call the Crow Indians called themselves the Absaroke (or Absaaloke), and that a large part of northern Wyoming and southeastern Montana was the original reservation granted to them by the United States in 1851 (the current Crow Nation is a small remnant of that space). All of today and tomorrow we are riding through their ancestral lands. In the north the mountains and hills have more water so are greener, in the south we found drier sage prairie. But throughout at regular intervals there are beautiful rivers and streams that drain the eastern slopes of the Beartooth and Yellowstone mountains into the Yellowstone river including the Stillwater River, Rock Creek and Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River.

We started by riding up the Stillwater River. with a much appreciated assist from crew member John S on the 25 mile 2% climb:

The Absaroke mountains in the distance

Still lots of snow showing in July. We're told snowfall last winter was well above average.

We climbed out of the river valley to cross the foothills.

where the majority of the day's climbing altitude was tackled, and conquered!

The sound of the breeze and undulating grass was enthralling:

The cemeteries here look to be organized by the town, not by churches as is true in North Carolina.

 After passing through the quaint town of Red Lodge which lies in the Rock Creek Valley we climbed over the ridge to the Bear Creek valley which had the remains of a coal mine which is preserved because of a tragedy there in 1943:

Riding down Bear Creek valley was a blast

Turning south, we rode up Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River,

and into Wyoming!


And since we were robbed of a sign when crossing from Idaho into Montana, how about a backwards look?



The drier southlands

with those long vistas

Seven of us worked as a team after the border to cross those hot plains. Here fellow tourist Bob takes a pull followed by Chip and Lisa.