Day 43: Island Park to Bozeman

Total mileage: 111

Last night, we realized we had extra time before we needed to be in Missoula. We had been hearing a lot about Bozeman, MT on our trip, so we decided to detour there. This meant a lot of riding today, but we decided it would be worth it.

The beginning of our ride was beautiful, but unfortunately took us into a headwind.

Morning view

We stopped at a bait and tackle shop to get water, and met lots of nice people there. It was nice to get out of the hyper-touristy areas closer to Yellowstone.

In the bathroom of the very nice bait & tackle shop we stopped in for water

We were running a bit behind schedule (ugh, wind), so we ate a quick (and scenic!) lunch in Ennis outside the grocery store and continued on our way. We took a gorgeous pass over the mountains on our way out of town.

Looking back after the steep climb out of Ennis. Big Sky Ski Resort is somewhere back there, but we couldn't pick it out.

The rest of our ride proved to be equally gorgeous, and we were happy to be detouring. In fact, it proved to be one of the more scenic rides of our trip. Along the way, we rode through Norris (which we heard has lovely hot springs) and through a cliff-lined valley along the Madison River. We were pretty jealous of all the people drifting slowly down the river on their inner tubes/rafts.

Several biggish climbs later and we were almost to Bozeman, where we had found a Warmshowers host with whom to stay the night. We were pretty tired by the time we rolled into town.

View from a hilltop

We had showers and a nice dinner with our host before calling it a night. 110 miles is tiring!