Beyond the headwaters of the Big Hole River and through the fabled upper Big Hole Valley, along Lewis & Clark's path over the Bitterroot Mountains, is the magnificent Bitterroot Valley. The Bitterroot River is an eighty-five-mile fishery which begins in the mountains of Southwest Montana and flows north to Missoula where it joins the Clark Fork. The East Fork and the West Fork of the Bitterroot cascade from high peaks on the Idaho border and meet to become the Bitterroot near the town of Darby. The drive from the lodge is one of the most spectacular scenic routes in the United States. The upper Big Hole Valley has fewer than two hundred residents and stretches roughly fifty miles by twenty miles, dotted with thousands of bread loaf-shaped haystacks and black Angus beef cattle. The Nez Perce Indians once used this valley for summer grassing grounds for their herds of horses on account of its lush grasslands. As you enter the timber, traveling along the continental divide on the west side of the valley, the Salmon and Bitterroot basins fall to either side of the road.