Forgot to tell you about the road construction yesterday. I saw that, and tho”t, “crap, I’ll be riding in wet mud or fresh asphalt.” Neither were true. Thank goodness. They were putting rumble strips in the middle of the road after having done the sides. Oh. My gosh, the best riding ever. The shoulders were wide and freshly broomed. New pavement was so smooth. 10 miles of bliss. Then back to the old shoulder with expansion cracks for a few miles. But, Heaven for a while. Today’s shoulders were great all the way.

I see stuff on the shoulder someone in a car never sees. Several hooks that you find on the end of a chain. Just lying there all by themselves. Bungi cords galore. And the most common one by far is the black rubber one. I’ve seen 11 now, and I bet over half of them were broken. I use bungi cords a lot, and I hate those black rubber ones. They are always breaking. They get brittle, and they are hard to stretch. I haven’t seen any of my favorite ones, probably because they don’t break.

I saw one flower today along the road mixed in with the flowering alfalfa and the flowering sweet clover. The purple and yellow was beautiful. Then, in the middle was a pink swainson’s pea plant. So pretty. Never did see another one, so don’t understand why it was there without a buddy. Looks like the alfalfa and sweet clover were planted by the highway department for erosion control. It was really thick. Nice to look at instead of weeds for a change.

The first 25 miles were out in the middle of nowhere. Not a single road intersected it. Not one ranch house, no animals. Must have been BLM land. Not even a tree. So glad I didn’t ride yesterday afternoon. I would have been a lightning rod in that storm that went through. Absolutely no where to take cover. Nice ride, but it was uphill all the way to the WY border.. then it flattened out, and I had a town every 6 miles or so. So less boring. MT scenery was great, but the long, straight gradual uphills were a little demoralizing.

Tomorrow is supposed to have lots of rolling hills, my kind of riding.