Day 6: A Shorty

Thursday, June 24

Alpaca Ranch in Marsh Creek Valley to Helena

We awoke to a gorgeous morning in our adorable little cabin at Barbara Nye’s wonderful alpaca farm cyclist hostel. Our plan for today was to keep it short with a final destination of Helena for the afternoon. Sarah has had a steadily worsening saddle sore that was becoming increasingly painful and well… just gross. We decided it would be smart to have it looked at to rule out infection. Just a few miles into our ride, we saw a young moose! We didn’t see mama right away so we high tailed it out of there but moose baby made our morning. We crossed over the Continental Divide twice en route to Helena so lots of climbing was packed into the 38 mile trip. We saw grazing families of free range black angus cows and babies in the high country today. We greet animals out loud as we encounter them all day. We’ve seen too many to count anymore … deer, bunnies, squirrels, prairie dogs, and of course birds. Still no bears! 

We rolled into MTB City where we would camp for the night. It’s a campground catering to cyclists. There is laundry, showers, and an outdoor kitchen. Having a shower and freshly laundered clothes is such a treat!

Urgent care stocked Sarah up with prescription antibiotic cream and enough bandages and tape and sticky pad things to hopefully keep things on the good side and she’s hoping to swap out her saddle ASAP. This unfortunately is a lesson in the fact that you can train all you want but until you’re in the true extended daily grind of the event, you can’t know for sure how your gear will function. Urgent care also advised taking a day off the saddle to allow the wound to “calm down” so we’ll be in Helena taking a “zero day” on day 7. Zero day means not riding at all. And it probably also means ice cream and beer.

Mileage: 39.9

Feet climbed: 3,310

Cumulative mileage: 389.0

Published June 25, 2021