We had a super luxurious late wake-up in our room at the Rainbow Valley Lodge. We didn’t know if we’d ride 44 miles to Twin Bridges or 72 miles to Dillon that day,but we didn’t care. We wanted to wake up slow, take advantage of the included continental breakfast at the lodge, and not race out early like we often do. Breakfast was a nice spread of muffins, donuts, coffee, yogurt, toast with peanut butter and/or wild huckleberry jam, and (though we didn’t eat them) microwaveable breakfast burritos. It was a nice room where the breakfast was staged, and we enjoyed sitting at the high table with log chairs, and having a nice conversation with a guy who happened to be there from Vancouver WA! The only negative was the continued negative energy from the lady who owns the place - she continues to either ignore us or look our way with disgust and disdain that she is not in any way trying to conceal. But we blew her off and just enjoyed ourselves with a nice breakfast, while our perfect little quiet clean service dog laid unobtrusively under the table, blissfully unaware of how angry the lady was that the dog was in her facility. When we went back to our room, we stripped both beds, folded the comforters/blankets, emptied and tied off the trash bags, and stacked the pillows neatly on the beds like we very typically do when we check out of a room; but in this facility with such an outwardly hostile owner, we really wanted to ensure that the room was immaculate when we left so that maybe in the future she would be more accommodating to travelers who arrive with service dogs. Rather than speak our minds and tell her how we felt about her blatant rudeness, we chose to take the high road and just acted exceedingly polite at all times and didn’t drop to her level of pettiness. She was a child, a petulant child, who didn’t get her way and threw a long, silent tantrum. We left, thanked the husband for his kindness, and rolled out through Ennis, two days before what is said to be an AMAZING 4th of July parade with 10,000 attendees. V walked Maui through town while I stopped at the end of town for two Gatorades to carry on the 10-mile climb that begins shortly after the Ennis city limit. So then we climbed and climbed and climbed. The climb itself was easy, honestly. We’re saying this a lot now with climbs because we’re in good biking shape, and because the Rockies are far easier than the Ozarks and the Appalachians in terms of climbing grade (they’re just longer out West, no big deal). The only thing that makes a climb challenging now is the heat; on this climb there was ZERO shade and the temps were only in the 70’s, but the light tailwind wasn’t enough to really assist and WAS enough to reduce the feeling of wind on our faces and therefore the climb felt far hotter. So it wasn’t hard, just warmer than we would have liked. But whatever, soon we were 10 miles up and blasting over the summit and down the steep, 4-mile, 7% descent into the super cool, super touristy, old West town of Virginia City, Montana. We felt touristy so we walked around, bought our 2022 Christmas ornament (we try to get one special one each year from our travels, or just something meaningful), stopped for slices of pizza, took pictures, and probably spent 1.5 hours there rather than just rolling through. That was fun but it likely impacted our ride day and was a factor in why we didn’t later make it to Dillon and rather stopped sooner in Twin Bridges later than day. Along the 30 miles from Virginia City to Twin Bridges we traversed the Ruby Valley, known for all the ruby/garnet mining that gave way to settlement here and to some extent continues today. There are huge piles of rocks along the roadway for miles and miles, evidence of the mining activity, interesting but also kind of an eyesore. It got a little sketchy around Sheridan (though we still stopped for a Coke and an ice cream sandwich) as it appeared a big, black thunderstorm may envelop us…but we put our heads down, mashed on the pedals, and were rewarded with a big tailwind and an 8-mile gentle downhill into Twin Bridges that we covered in a little less than a half hour!! In Twin, we stopped briefly to check the hours of the grocery store and the restaurant (both open until 9 and we’d arrived around 4) before we headed to the Bill White Bike Camp in the city park. Bill White was a liaison between cyclists and the town, and eventually convinced the town that they needed to build a bike camp in the city park to encourage cyclists to stop and stay (and spend money) rather than passing through to the bigger town of Dillon 28 miles down the highway. So we had a shelter to sleep in with two couches, an outdoor sink to wash things, a shower with hot water, and electricity to charge our devices and lights. (Bill passed in 2012, sadly, but I got to meet him when he dropped by randomly to chat with me when I was camping here in 2010.) Vanesa clipped Maui, we each showered and sink-washed our clothes, and we watched the wind blow thunderstorms all around us from inside the comfort of the bike camp shelter. We also walked the 1/4 mile into town for a veggie pizza, which turned out to be huge so we have food for breakfast (and lunch?) tomorrow! There’s a nice river (Beaverhead) that flows right by the camp so we fell asleep to the sound of wind, a rushing river, and the occasional car/trunk barreling down the highway and a few random smatterings of fireworks (it was July 2 that day). The couches and the shelter were not in as nice of shape as they were in 2010 when I visited - it was dirtier, dustier, much of the signage was fading or water damaged, and the shower soap dispenser was broken/empty - and I wonder if it’s being neglected a bit now that it’s main supporter (Bill White) is no longer alive. Vanesa kept her inhaler handy throughout the night in case she had an asthma attack from all the dust, but somehow she managed to keep that at bay. Tomorrow, depending on weather, we’ll have a short 28-mile day to Dillon or a longer, harder, more mountainous, 75-mile day to Jackson. We’re expecting to have to try to avoid rain and thunderstorms…