Almost immediately after leaving for the day, we began the second largest climb of the trip. Over the next 13 miles, we would climb over 3,000 feet, briefly crossing the Idaho border, then continue over the continental divide for the first time at 7,241 feet. After crossing Chief Joseph pass, we dropped down into the Big Hole valley where one of the major battles of the Nez Perce Indian wars took place and stopped at the Big Hole Valley Battle Field Visitor's Center to have lunch.

The Visitor's Center is on top of a bluff and overlooks the entire valley and the mountain ranges on all four sides that create its borders. The magnitude of "Big Sky Country" is incomprehensible. Every direction you look, you can see for at least fifty miles. The snow-capped mountain ranges, while in some cases 100 miles away, loom thousands of feet in the air, while your eyes can follow the road that you're travelling to the next town, then the town after that until it disappears in the horizon. It's not until you see the speck of another biker, perhaps 200 yards away, that you can then put a perspective as to how ludicrously large the landscape is.

The most impressive feature of "Big Sky Country" however, is the big sky. From one vantage point, you can watch weather systems develop, approach, and disappear over parts of Montana one hundred miles away. It is not uncommon to see a furocious thunderstorm brewing to the southwest, while the sky is peaceful and sunny to the northeast. To put this into perspective, it is like sitting in the sun on my parents balcony in Milford, Connecticut and looking west to watch the thunderstorm occurring in New York City, 90 miles away.

Of course I mention the passage of a thuderstorm to the southwest, because as the Deffenbaugh's and myself were eating our lunch at the Visitor's Center in the hot sun, a thunderstorm was brewing in the south, the direction we were heading. Over a period of about a half an hour, the light fluffy clouds began to turn deep shades of gray, until eventually they completely blocked the sun and threatened the horizon with an ominous darkness. Not wanting to get caught in the storm, we quickly finished eating, then got back on our bikes.

As we rode east to Wisdom, the storm in the south appeared to be moving northwest towards the mountains. From the clouds, you could see the rain falling to the ground. At a distance of 20 miles, a heavy rain looks as though a piece of cloud is peeling away and slowly falling to the ground. You can also tell which way the wind is blowing by the direction in which the cloud is "falling." The rain was blowing north, at Wisdom, we turned south.

By the time we reached Wisdom, the clouds had overtaken the sky. While still sunny to the northeast, the sky overhead was a threatening black. As soon as we turned south, the favorable cross/tailwinds immediately became a menacing headwind and the temperature dropped 20 degrees in about 30 minutes. Within minutes of facing the headwind I began to feel drops hit against my arms and my face. Then the drops began to pick up both intensity and frequency as the sky to the southwest became illuminitated from the sporadic streaks of lightening. Natalie, Carl, Ralie and I formed a pace line to help break through the headwind. At full speed, we were only able power ahead at 8mph. The drops on my arm continued, but when I looked around, nothing was wet. The pellets bombarding my body weren't rain or hail, but rather bugs. Each arm had at least 50 mosquitos and gnats burrowed in my hairs, while my beard contained countless more. I tried wiping them off, but it was useless, the drops just kept coming.