Wyoming 2018

Our friends invited us to stay at their amazing family compound in Wyoming. The family place is about 10 miles outside of a cool little town called Buffalo.

Aside from good company and food and just general hang time in a beautiful and amazing spot, I have three great experiences to report.

Presented in no particular order. Except for #3, which is the coolest one.

1. I caught my first brown trout. I pretty much only catch rainbow on the Spokane and at Kettle River. On the St. Joe river, it's nearly all cutthroat.

So finally catching a brown was cool. As it turns out, Clear Creek, which is the fishery that runs through the property where we stayed, is jammed full of brown trout. So I caught a bunch of browns.


2. I took the best ride so far this year. Maddie and I have been doing a lot of mountain bike riding together and it kills me how much I love doing that. She's so capable and fast and chilled. We did most of the Weds night races this year -- one lappers -- and she beat me every time. We've been hitting Beacon Hill in the morning and have committed to at least one morning ride there a week for the summer.

The ride we took in Wyoming was a beautiful descent from the family place where we were staying down into the town of Buffalo. It was about 2000 feet of descending over about 11 miles.

Here's the GPS track.

The best part was a flowy bit of single track dropping  between a couple mountains. I wasn't sure which bike to bring to Wyoming, so I brought my NFE -- for this ride, I'd have preferred my mountain bike, but the NFE took care of business. I had the required pinch flat, then took it a bit easier.

The end of the mountain section of this ride included a drop into the creek below -- there was probably a dozen or more tight switch backs... on the NFE I was able to clean them all. Not sure if I could have on the mountain bike.

3. UPDATED:

I *thought* that I caught a Golden Trout.

I didn't.  One plan in my life is to get fit enough again so I can do some alpine lake fishing, which is where one typically finds the mythical Golden Trout.

I showed my pics to Sean at Silver Bow and he broke it to me gently -- that this is a rainbow. The Golden doesn't have the spots under the lateral red/orange line. And the Golden usually has the medallion shaped spots too.

I will not be deterred. Looks like I need to keep working on my fitness after all.