Rain...

Day 17: 67 Miles - About an hour after I crawled into the tent last night, it started raining. I thought It'd pass over the night and not really be anything to worry about. Every time I woke up during the night, it was raining, and continued to rain all morning. We decided that it would be miserable to start our the day riding in the rain, so we bummed around Wisdom, MT until about 2pm. By then, the rain had let up and we rode on to the next town, Jackson, MT. We decided we'd take a chance on the next 45 miles, allowing us to get to Dillon, MT and fill our planned mileage for the day. We got over the first pass, the highest of the trip so far at over 7300 feet, with no problems and weather looking good. We cruised on to the second climb of the day and crested it with less than 20 miles to go. Looking good right? - wrong. With about 15 miles to go, the skies opened up and dumped everything its been holding back for th last two weeks. We thought we'd been able to sneek through the rain by delaying our start, but it found us in the end. I guess its better than having it rain all day or even starting in the rain.
Other than the rain, the day was great. Each climb was about 1000 feet with pretty good views off of either side. We also had a pretty good tail wind for most of the day which allowed us to finish with an average speed of 20.0 mph for the 67 miles, our best average for a day for the trip so far. We also had another best...our max speed for the day was 45.1 mph...try that with a fully loaded bike and a broken rear spoke.
Speaking of, while we're in Dillon, I've got to try to find some spokes to rebuild the drive side of my wheel. I've had a few spokes break here and there and have been able to get them fixed, but rebuilding it should solve these problems. So much for putting trust in a worn out wheel.
Tonight we treated ourselves to some shelter from the rain in a Super 8 in Dillon. Tomorrow we should be heading to Ennis, MT and then West Yellowstone on Tuesday.