Day 53: No Time for Losers, 'Cause We are the Champions!

Lolo Hot Springs, MT to Lowell, ID

Stats!
Miles biked today: 87.3 (a new record!)
Total miles biked on trip so far: 1926.3
Max speed: 27.5 mph
# of Rocky Mountains climbed: 1
# of butterflies passed: 371
# of waterfalls passed: 22
# of rainstorms: 2
# of time zones crossed: 1 (we are now in Pacific time!)

Today we had the bike trip that I had fantasized about before we left. We started out by climbing a mountain, and then did another 80 miles to boot. We passed tons of waterfalls and beautiful scenery. It rained, but it was a warm rain that cleared up after awhile. Even after almost 90 miles of riding, we felt good. That was the kind of bike trip day I imagined we'd have, back when I was young and idealistic.

We started this morning with an 8-mile climb up Lolo Pass, our first rocky mountain climb! I was a little nervous, but we were actually able to bike the whole thing – no walking! We did have to take several rest breaks, but otherwise it was very manageable. Okay, we sweat buckets and I was seriously huffing and puffing. But I was BEYOND thrilled when we reached the top. We have one more big climb to make, probably two days from now, and then we'll be out of the rockies.

We stopped at the Lolo Pass Interpretive Center for a bit, just to rest and refill our waters (it was HOT), and we were excited about the 5-mile, steep descent. Unfortunately, we got stuck behind a truck carrying crushed cars. It took the entire lane and went down the whole mountain at 15 mph, so we had to go 15 mph, too. There was no road shoulder, and the road was too winding to risk passing in the other lane. We probably could have at least gotten into the 30s (mph-wise), but instead we had to brake for the full 5 miles, and I was worried I'd blow out a tire. Very frustrating.

After that, the route leveled out and we were going either flat or very slightly downhill. There was no wind for most of the ride, which was nice.

About 20 miles into our trip, we got to the Lochsa Lodge (we rode the entire day along the Lochsa River), where we had a big lunch. We knew there was nothing for 65+ miles after the lodge (as far as services go), since the ride was through the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. When they say “wilderness,” they mean it. So we made sure to eat lunch at Lochsa, and we stocked up on supplies at the general store.

We weren't sure if we'd end up camping at the campground 60 miles in, or if we'd make it all the way to Lowell. Either way we'd need at least one more full meal, so we bought Chef Boyardee Ravioli, Doritos, Famous Amos cookies, and Gatorade. It's the shelf-stable dinner of champions! We learned early on that if we pack fresh sandwiches in our bag, that by the time we pull them out of our steam oven waterproof panniers, they've become swollen, botulism-infested deathwiches. So we don't do that anymore. And we try to eat as much protein as we can, so beef ravioli seemed like a good pick.

Aaaaaanyway, we were ready to hit the road again when it started raining. We debated just packing it in at 20 miles, but it was only noon and it seemed silly to quit so early, when we had started with such high hopes for the day. So we got going in the rain, and it cleared up pretty quickly. It had only really showered, and we were dry again in no time.

The ride, in general, was amazing. I felt like we were in a pine maze. You could see a wall of tall pine trees in front of you, a wall of tall pine trees to your left (past the river), and a wall of tall pine trees to your right. The road kept turning, but all you could see were pine-covered mountains. And tons and tons of butterflies. And waterfalls. And flowers. And rocks. But, really, the scenery didn't change much. Beautiful pine maze all the way.

As we rode, it was mostly warm and humid, but we'd occasionally feel these bursts of cold air … from the river, maybe? They were really cold bursts. After awhile, we could feel the warm breeze and the cold breeze on us at the same time, coming from different directions. Of course, that meant....

It rained again. And this time, it wasn't messing around. It POURED. The wind blew. The rain was falling so hard that it actually hurt when it hit my skin. I thought it might be hail, it stung so badly, but Dean was pretty sure it was just rain. We looked at the sky, and there was no sign of it letting up. After we passed the campgrounds at about 25 miles in, the next option was at 60 miles. So we rode there. All in all, it was about 10 miles we biked in the POURING, miserable, windy rain (about an hour).

We got to the campground and decided to go ahead and eat our feast of Boyardee ravioli, doritos, and cookies at the communal picnic area, where a few hiking groups were hiding out from the rain. There was a couple at the table next to us from California (they had a car parked in the lot... cheaters) and they had white wine, fancy granola, and crackers with fancy cheese. The girl looked at us and whispered to her boyfriend that we were eating (imagine disgusted tone) “Chef Boyardee... eww.”

One thing that I have learned from this bike trip is not to be quick to judge. I was at a picnic shelter, eating Chef Boyardee from a can, wearing a purple, ill-fitted bike shirt over a longer, soaking wet orange bike shirt. I was clutching the canned ravioli like it had magical powers to bestow upon me. Dean asked, “So... what is the difference between a bike tourist and a vagrant?” Not much. I have been seen in public very oddly dressed, eating disgusting foods with gusto, with crazy and tangled hair, with really odd tan lines, and very, very dirty. I've worn my bathing suit top like it was a real shirt on laundry days. So I am going to try really hard not to judge, now. If you catch me saying, “What on earth was she thinking?” about someone, stop me and remind me of this moment, when I was judged for my sauce-stained face and bike-greased legs. Also, I spilled ravioli on my helmet. It wasn't my finest hour.

I wanted to say to that girl, “Look, you California trustafarian, I didn't just roll up here in my SUV filled with gourmet snacks. No! I biked here, 60 miles, over a mountain, through the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, and through two rainstorms. I earned this Chef Boyardee ravioli. Did you earn that brie and those Wheat Thins? No. So shut it.” But I didn't say it.

When we pulled into the campground the skies were dark and cloudy as far as the eye could see. We were worried we'd have to stay at the campground and set up our tent in the rain. While we were in the picnic shelter we kept an eye on the sky, and eventually saw a patch of blue open up to the west. We were still feeling good, and we really wanted to break our distance record today (not to mention that we didn't want to camp), so we got back on the bikes. Our butts were pretty mad at us about that.

Dean, smiling at the picnic shelter when the sun came out.

The next 15 miles (60-75) went pretty quickly. The last 12 were tough. We were getting tired, and we were just ready to BE THERE already. But it was a pretty ride. After the rain, there was a ton of fog on the water, and steam rising from the roads. It didn't diminish our visibility at all, it just looked cool!

Another thing we enjoyed about our trip today was all the fun creek, mountain, and road (etc) names that we encountered. Here are a few for your enjoyment:

Looks like there was a death in Lowell recently...

Ashpile Creek
Papoose Saddle
Dead Mule Creek
Indian Post Office Creek
The Smoking Place
Colgate Licks
Bear Oil & Roots
Russian Creek (it was rushing!)
Old Man Point
Noseeum Butte
Tick Creek
Bee Creek
Fish Creek
Horse Sweat Pass

Awesome.

Tomorrow we will head for Kamiah, ID. It's not very far, but there's a big mountain right past it, and we can either go 30 miles tomorrow or 80 (including a mountain). I don't know if we'll have the juice to do another mountain tomorrow. We might want to wait, and tackle it fresh the next morning (like we did today, and that worked out great!). We'll let you know how it goes tomorrow!

If you look closely here, you can see the rain falling!

Day 52: Riding HighHigh in Lolo

Missoula, MT to Lolo Hot Springs, MT

Stats!
Miles biked today: 38.6
Total miles biked on trip so far: 1839.0
Max speed: 24 mph
# of feet climbed in elevation: 700
# of feet it looked like we were climbing, as we rode along: 0

We are back!

We deliberately chose to make today an easy day for ourselves, for a few reasons. One is that it's our first day back after a week off. When we were in Cooperstown, ND, a couple that we met (Bruce and Dana) said that a rest day is great, but getting on the bikes after three consecutive rest days makes the ride feel like the very first day of your trip. You might as well be starting over totally. And we had seven consecutive days off. Or maybe six? Anyway, a lot, so we wanted to take it easy.

Also, right after Lolo Hot Springs is Lolo Pass, our first rocky mountain climb. We wanted to face that fresh, rested, and well fed tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed!

And, finally, after Lolo Hot Springs, there are no towns for over 90 miles. I think we will definitely be camping tomorrow. Here, we have no cell phone signal and only get wifi by blogging from the lodge lobby, so I think tomorrow we might be totally incommunicado. Don't worry if there's no post. And, mom, I'll call you asap the next day to let you know we're okay! But we are on the outskirts of nowhere today, and tomorrow I expect we'll be in the exact center of nowhere.

As we were leaving the motel this morning, we saw a group of bicyclists that we had spoken to a few times before. The girl in the group is a junior at Virginia Tech! She has a jersey that is covered in VT logos and local Blacksburg business sponsors of the VT Cycling Team. I really want one of those jerseys! They were driving to Lolo and then biking the pass today. Cheaters! (hahahaha) The girl is traveling with her brother and boyfriend, and their dad is driving the support vehicle, so they don't have to be loaded down with all their gear. Nice! They started from Virginia Beach, so we had a lot to talk about.

When we were at breakfast this morning, I asked Dean, "Are you happy to be getting back on the bikes?" He grimaced and said, "Uh...... kind of?" But once we were on the road and riding again, it felt great to be back, and he agreed. Resting was nice, but biking is lots of fun, too!

The ride today was 100% climbing, but on a very small incline. To the naked eye, it looked flat, but your legs sure can tell the difference. Still, it wasn't too hard. It was a beautiful day, if a smidge hot, and we enjoyed the beautiful scenery. There were no towns between Lolo and Lolo Hot Springs, so we had gas station jerky and granola bars for lunch. It was delicious!

As we rode along, we could actually smell the pine trees. They smelled really strong, and were everywhere around us. I said to Dean that the smaller mountains didn't look all that much different than the Blue Ridge, but he thought they did because there are no deciduous trees -- all smelly pines. It looks distinctively western.

We passed beautiful streams and gorgeous mountains and lots of bees being kept by area beekeepers. We also stopped at some of the historic pullouts along the way, talking about Lewis and Clark's journey and the history of the area. In 1996, a windstorm knocked down thousands of trees, and we rolled by a bunch of them, still blown over, on the sides of the mountains.

Rides can be long, and our minds wander. At one point, I had "The Lazy Song" in my head, and I asked Dean what song was running through his head. He said, very matter-of-factly, "No Scrubs," by TLC. I guess that's reasonable, since neither of us want any scrubs.

When we arrived at Lolo Hot Springs (the town name that is very fun to whisper in a sexy voice), it was pretty early and we were feeling good, like we could probably conquer the mountain in the afternoon. But rationality prevailed, and we decided not to blow our entire rest week on the first day. We actually weren't even sure if we were in Lolo Hot Springs, since it consists of two building complexes -- one on each side of the road. We thought maybe we were on the outskirts of town, but nope, this is it.

At the Lolo Hot Springs Lodge we looked around and thought, "This place is going to be EXPENSIVE." It's really beautiful inside, having kind of a ski lodge western feel, but very well done, and all guests have access to the hot spring spa inside. The lady at the desk took one look at us and said, "Now, our least expensive rooms are...." She was looking up the available rooms and rates, and I said, "So you get a lot of bike tourists?" and she said, "Yep!"

The tone of voice she used (a warning, bad newsy kind of tone) when saying she was looking up her cheapest rooms made us a little bit worried, but we were stuck anyway because there was no other town to go to after this. So when she said, "$69 including tax," we were super relieved. We've stayed in way less nice places for more money than that. Our room is really cute and rustic looking, and we've already dipped ourselves in the hot springs. Very relaxing! I think we're ready to face our first rocky mountain tomorrow!

Day 51: Glacier National Park

Missoula, MT

We had a pretty nice 4th yesterday. We went down to the river, and there was a weird place in the river where the water broke and made a continuous small, curling wave. The water was otherwise rushing really fast, but there were nevertheless several river surfers out there riding the one wave. After awhile, they'd each fall and get pulled down the river pretty fast, but somehow kept making their way back. It looked really fun, but dangerous. The day was beautiful and the water was freezing! We also took a dip in the hotel pool.

Dean and I took a road trip to Glacier National Park today! It was absolutely fantastic -- possibly the most beautiful place I've ever been in the world (I'd say it's neck and neck with Geiranger Fjord in Norway). We took one of the nature trails and stopped at every chance we could to take photos. All the way there in the car and the entire time we were in the park, we just kept saying, "Wow! WOW! Oh, man! Look, look, look!" We also saw some new (for us) species of animal, including a giant black and blue bird that looked like a giant bluejay, kind of, and prairie dogs! I'm really glad we went.

Ever since we got to Montana, we've just seen tons and tons of bicycle tourists. It's WAY more than we've seen anywhere else -- several per day. We saw a few on the Going-to-the-Sun road at Glacier, and I thought they were totally crazy. Not only was the road busy and narrow, with NO shoulder at all, but I can guarantee that not a single driver was watching the road. It was so stunningly beautiful in every direction, that looking at the road was impossible. I hope the bikers made it okay!

I'm going to pepper the entire post with pictures from today, since they can explain it better than I can (though they still don't do the park justice), and move on to other subjects.

This morning I went straight to the Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) headquarters, about a block from our motel, and bought a Lewis and Clark map leaving from Missoula. We are getting on the road again tomorrow! The day after tomorrow we will begin what is hopefully our swift and decisive conquest of the rockies. Really, I'm nervous about getting back on the road after so long off, and of getting back on the road in the rockies after so long off. It's been about a week since our last bike day!

This route will take us through Idaho, Washington and Oregon, still ending up in Seaside/Astoria. I am excited about going through the twin cities (one in Idaho and one in Washington of Lewiston and Clarkston. I can't remember if we'll hit Pacific time at the Idaho border or the Washington border, but it's soon! I'd say we have three weeks left on the trip. That kind of makes me sad! And it kind of makes me relieved.

I really hope we make it through this next week in the rockies!

Day 50: Happy 4th, everyone!

Missoula, MT

A quick update today to say that we have decided to continue on the Trans-Am or Lewis and Clark trail (both through Missoula) if we can get maps from ACA tomorrow morning. If not, we'll try to rent a car to go to Glacier for a day or so and get back on our planned route from there. But the bike trip will roll on! I'm very glad we decided to take several days off, though. We really needed it.

To celebrate the 4th, here are some photos of the beautiful Rocky Mountains and other good ol' American sights from our ride in the other day!





I hope you like them!

Day 48: A 4th of July Weekend Vacation!

Great Falls, MT to Missoula, MT

We had a beautiful ride in today. I mean, an AMAZINGLY beautiful ride in. It was breathtaking with all the mountains.

It's really cool to just walk around Missoula, which is a great little town, and turn a corner and just see a snow-topped mountain peak.

We are going to kick back this weekend and get some good rest, and then after the 4th we are going to get back on the bikes, one way or another, and keep heading for the coast. We'll either go to Glacier National Park and continue on the Northern Tier, or else we'll get maps for this section of the Trans-Am and bike straight from Missoula. We haven't decided yet.

To be honest, I am just not in the blogging mood tonight, and I can't seem to talk Dean into doing it again, so I'm afraid this is it for tonight. I may not blog again for a few days, or I might blog every night, including adding pictures from today. I'm just going to go where the mood takes me, because for this weekend, we're on vacation!! (and it feels great!). :)

Day 47: Motoring in Montana

Wolf Point, MT to Great Falls, MT

Stats!
Miles Biked today: 0
Total Miles Biked on trip so far: 1800.4
Miles driven in a Buick: 320 some
# of bike tourists passed today: 12

Dean's writing the blog today!

Today we resumed driving toward Missoula. It's nice for a change to be able to cover ground so quickly. We saw a lot of hills (and a few miles of dirt road due to construction) that we sure weren't in the mood to bike!

We saw some beautiful Montana scenery today. There's a little mountain range that we saw to our south, the Big Belt (or maybe Little Belt) mountains. There were some badland looking areas too. The best part was a big canyon that had a little town set in the bottom.

We also saw a bunch of bike tourists today. The first part of our trip today was on Route 2, which is part of the ACA route. We saw two westbounders, about 5 eastbounders (including 2 on recumbents) and about 5 more hanging around outside the Glasgow bicycle shop. When we saw them we both felt kind of sorry we weren't biking too. Maybe once we get to Missoula!

We stopped a couple times at museums in Valley and Phillips counties. We saw a bunch of old pioneer stuff and dinosaurs. Here's a bunch of pictures!

Day 46: A Hard Earned Night's Rest at a Motel on the Rez

Watford City, ND (to Bismarck, ND to Watford City, ND) to Wolf Point, MT

Miles biked today: 1.9 (woot!)
Total miles biked on trip so far: 1800.4 (yessss!)
Max speed: 12 mph
Miles travelled by car today (gross): 440 (approximate)
Miles travelled by car today (net): 90 (approximate)

What a hullaballoo today was! First things first, I updated yesterday's post. Also, sorry there are so few pics today. :( We'll try to do better in the future!

Yesterday, when we rolled into Watford City, we were seriously disappointed that there was nowhere available to stay. After 7 straight biking days, we sorely needed a rest day, and after the 101 degree day of biking, we didn't want to camp in the sweltering heat (a low of 77 degrees for that night) and we certainly didn't want a camping rest day. Add to that the fact that we were told, a) there are no hotels available for the next 70 miles or so, no matter what direction you go in; b) there's road construction resulting in no shoulder for the next 30 miles; and c) (from the mouth of an EMT) the ride is dangerous even for the trucks and he's been called to the scene of several fatalities recently, we decided to try to get out of town in a car.

Trouble was, Watford City doesn't have a car rental place. They have a U-Haul shop, and we stopped by (no on there) and called (no answer) and left a message (no call back), so that was a bust. We heard that the Napa Auto Parts in town has a car that they rent, but they wouldn't do point-to-point (meaning we'd have to return it to Watford City, defeating the purpose of the rental).

We thought we just might have to bike to either Sidney, MT or Williston, ND, both about 60 miles away on busy, heavy construction roads, and go to the car rental places there. We called both Sidney and Williston's car rental businesses, and none of them even had a single car available until mid-July. That's how busy these oil boom towns are. Nuts.

So we devised a plan! We'd rent the Watford City car, drive to the airport in Bismarck (about 3 hrs away) pick up a rental car there, drive both cars back to Watford City, return the Napa Auto Parts car, and drive the Bismarck car through Montana. And that's exactly what we did! The only challenge was that car rental places are unwilling to let people drive their cars to other towns (point-to-point) around the 4th of July holiday (for whatever reason), so we could only get the car if we promised to take it to Missoula, where the Bismarck Avis had promised to send a car soon. Deal! I wanted to see Missoula anyway.

We had a long, tiring haul today, and learned that every road in western North Dakota is either closed or under serious construction (not exaggerating). We almost didn't make it back to the Napa before they closed, and they were holding our bikes hostage!

Anyway, we are now in Wolf Point, Montana in a lovely, climate controlled motel on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. I plan to sleep very well tonight. We have a bit of a schedule to keep (car must be to Missoula by 3 p.m. Saturday), but I think we'll still have time to see some sights and get a bit of rest.

Not sure if we'll resume biking after Missoula or figure something else out. I think we need a few days of rest before making any decisions, and I think we might try to stick around Missoula until after the 4th. I guess we'll just have to wait and see!