Day 6 - Ferndale
to Cedar Creek Campground (Flathead National Forest)

Above: The Swan River early in the morning, looking east into the sun.

• Today is going to be a good riding day but we will be riding into the sun, It makes for poor photographs (called Sun Shots).
• Today we will put-on and take-off our jackets more times that I can ever remember changing in one day;
  when we are in the sun we will NOT need jackets, when we are in the shade we WILL need jackets.
• Today, we will ride beyond our vehicle pickup point and then loop back in order to maximize our ride time for our last day of riding.

Above Left: Pedaling south out of Ferndale.

Above Right: A pond reflection. It is the first time that we have seen Lilly Pads in many years.

Above Left: I believe that Horseshoe is a small fishing lake.

Above Right: This appears to be a Cattle Sorting setup. I am pretty sure that we are on National Forest property now.

Above: Many miles of riding like this today.

Above: The forest is dense. There are mountains around us but they are shielded by trees for long stretches of distance.

Above: The beginning of Fall foliage change.

Above Left: Raspberry leaves turning colors.

Above Right: We decided to take a Lunch Break here.

Above Left: This is the log that we sat on for Lunch. It took a moment to realize that this was not a fungus but the remains of a pine cone after a squirrel broke it up for a meal.

Above Right: A new purple flower to us.

Above: Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR); we're pedaling southbound and climbing on NF 129, Mission Mountains, Montana; Sept, 2014. As dirt roads go, this was a really good pathway.

Above: We are looking east toward the Swan Mountain Range.

Above Left: We are working our way downhill from a local pass toward the Swan River National [Wildlife] Refuge.

Above Right: We met a guy with a wood cutting permit to clear dead fall and dead wood from the roadway. This is for himself (his family). He just splits the wood on site. Terry admired his packing skills (look at the neat stack on the back of his truck). We ran into a few individuals with cutting permits. We did NOT see any loggers today. He was a nice guy and he enjoyed our company, albeit brief.

Above Left: Riding downhill; it is either brief of fraught with brake work, there is just something wrong with having to use brakes going downhill.

Above Right: That is a fleeting glimpse of Swan Lake inside the Swan River National [Wildlife] Refuge. I don't think that we will see it again and we will ride almost next to it.

Above: We are on NF 9714, soon to change to NF 10229, and then follow NF 9719 for the remainder of the day (all in Flathead National Forest).

Above: Two signs, virtually back to back, and these are the last road direction signs that we will see for the rest of the day. We had a few 'Think about it' unmarked intersections down the road. Thank goodness for our map from Adventure Cycling.

We have a support vehicle at Cedar Creek Campground on the Fatty Creek Access Road but we will ride beyond Cedar Creek Campground to the actual Fatty Creek on the GDMBR and then loop back to the support vehicle (thus ending this GDMBR bike tour segment). We are performing the short add-on route climb to get the work effort out of the way for our followup bike tour so that we start our next bike tour at the top of a hill rather that at the bottom of a hill - We had the extra time and good weather to perform that feat on that date.

Above Left: Coming up on what we think is Woodard Creek, on NF 9719 (GDMBR, MT; there is no signage).

Above Right: Looking at Woodard Creek up-stream.

Above Left: Looking eastward at Woodard Creek's down-stream area.

Above Right: Pedaling onward in a big tree forest.

Above Left: The view south, down NF 9719 (GDMBR, MT).

Above Right: Controlled Fire Burn on the Mission Mountain Range. We did not see a person or vehicle in the area.

Above Left: Fallen Leaves (a sign of what is yet to come).

Above Right: We were going to stop on the crest of this rise and take a water break. We did. I was not looking further ahead than 20 yards/meter. When I looked ahead I saw a very skinny full-grown Cougar about 50 yards/meters down the road. The Mountain Lion was sauntering from right to left diagonally across the road, at mid-point it stopped to turn its head backwards to look directly at us, and then it turned left to the uphill slope and walked off the road and disappeared into the thicket. It took me a while to realize what I'd just seen, I had never seen a Mountain Lion in the wild before. All of this happened with me blocking Terry's view, she never saw the big Cat. I took this picture but the Cougar was long gone.

Above Left: A small bridge. We had seen this type of bridge before. I initially thought that it was just made of scrap lumber with some pre-cut square holes for some other purpose. On this crossing, I realized that the square holes were for access to hooks or holes for a crane lift type of bridge placement operation.

Above Right: Ferns are already turning to Fall colors.

Above Left: A rare glimpse of the Swan Mountain Range to our far east.

Above Right: This is not a good photo but the Cedar Creek Campground is off-route about 1.5 miles to the left (it appears straight in this picture, we are standing in the curve portion of the road) and the Fatty Creek crossing of the GDMBR is to the right, about 3 miles and all uphill to get there. We are going to Fatty Creek and then returning to go to the Cedar Creek Campground (where this tour leg will end and where our shuttle car awaits us).

Above Left: A sign warns of Log Trucks.

Above Right: Steep Climb.

Above Left: We are high enough in elevation to see snow capped peaks on mountains beyond our local mountain range.

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