Life is good in Montana. Andy and I had the downtown tour of Livingston, MT this morning. It’s very satisfying to wake up and realize that we did not have to drive for a whole day. Walk out the door and a few minutes later there’s the Yellowstone River, then there’s Main street and the downtown. After we adjusted bikes, and cleaned them, Andy, Lincoln, and I put up our ultralight tents – Andy has the Z-Pack Hexamid , Lincoln the new Contrail, and I set up the Moment.
In the afternoon, Lincoln, Andy, and I went for a bike ride of almost two hours, right out the door from here on 9th Street. After a few miles on the pavement out of town, we climbed up onto some high hills and just kept up on a roller coaster of a rutted gravel and mud back road.
It got to the point where the mud increased- the driver of a pickup truck coming toward us rolled down his window and advised up that it got increasingly muddy and rutted ahead, so we turned back and wound out way back.
Dinner was at the Murray, where us guys and Stephanie each ordered a specialty wood-fired oven pizzas for $5 and sampled some local drafts. It’s much colder here than I expected- 30’s this morning, and there is lighter snow down to 5,500 feet, with thick cover above 7,000 feet.
Tom Jamrog's Weblog 
looks like another great Opie Day for you!
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Eat, Sleep, Ride: How I Braved Bears, Badlands, and Big Breakfasts in My Quest to Cycle the Tour Divide by Paul Howard
Great account of the Montana mud.
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What we encountered was not the same mud that is described in the book. That mud is like concrete. We had normal mud that releases when the wheels speed up.
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