Day 6

The overnight storm dissipated by morning thankfully, but revealed snow we weren’t expecting. We dallied at the hotel til the sun got a bit higher before we set off. 

The first hour was reasonably flat on the two lane highway. After so many days on wilderness roads and trails, the highway was so loud!

We passed a major coal operation, looked like they’re pretty much taking a whole mountain down, one giant truckload at a time and loading it onto rail cars as far as you can see. After pavement end (and after lunch/nap) we rode a decent but steep gravel road up Flathead Pass to almost 6,000 feet. A beautiful blue sky prevailed the rest of the day!

Coming down, a river had pretty much overtaken the road and large rocks ran for several miles making the going rough and often push time. 

Finally arriving at Pollock Rec Site, a primitive but perfect campground beside the Flathead River. We had it all to ourselves! 

Dave is the best cook ever! Tonight it was dehydrated beans and rice with a bunch of dehydrated potatoes added. Add some Tajin, cayenne, and salt/pepper and it’s pretty damn good! 

A successful campfire start by yours truly using my patented teepee method chased the chill away after the sun dropped behind a mountain.

A hard but rewarding day, tonight will drop to 39f, so I have almost every piece of clothing on, two pairs of sox, and my rain pants around the end of my bag so my toes don’t freeze again. 

A very good day…

Day 7

Froze in the tent again! Harder biking day than yesterday! Our seventh consecutive day is starting to feel like 27! 

Meals are so good! Spaghetti and sauce with Couscous mixed in, Beef Stroganoff with dried potatoes mixed in. Yum!!!

Met other bikers w sag wagon, doesn’t seem real to claim to be riding with a truckload of support stuff along at the end of every day!

Ok, this part not pretty… Totallt tweaked my back putting bike butt balm on! What a goofy way to tweak a back! Painful all day, but only when I get off the bike and try to stand straight or sit down… But today again proved, to me at least, the best fix for back pain is activity!

Saw some deer, grouse, chipmunks, squirrels, and bear scat but no bears. 

Day 8

Day 6 was hard. Day 7 harder. Today? Fucking steep! Only made 12 miles by 2pm!!! That’s like 2mph! You have no idea… At one point had to hike all our gear up the side of a hill for half a mile, go back down and do it again with our bikes. Crazy steep difficult, climbing up through rocks and muck up to our ankles! Then after that, we still had another five miles of constant uphill to go, using 80% pedaling and 20% pushing. Thankfully made it to Galton Pass at 4:45p, 6100′ elevation, with still 22 miles to go to Eureka… Now I know why they say if you make it through the first eight days, you can do it all!

Coming down the other side of the pass, it was a rough road and very steep down so we all really wore the heck out of our brake pads. 

Finally made it to the U.S. Border crossing, Chris wanted to celebrate with a beer so we stopped at the souvenir bar and had a cold one with eight miles to go. I told him that’s not such a good idea with miles still to go, but we all survived and Chris eventually made it too 🙂 Made it into Eureka, only two hotels and we were lucky to get rooms in one of them. Many of the rooms were being used by forest service people fighting the fire nearby. Very smoky in every direction!

Had a great dinner of smoked chicken and penne pasta and a couple big sky ipa’s, tasty! Went to bed assuming we were going to stay in the same motel again and have a day off, boy did that change… 

After brekky we walked to the state forestry office and they told us much of our route for today and next day was closed due to fire. We pondered that issue and while we could have ridden the no shoulder two lane main road, we thought otherwise. 

Eureka is a very small town, with few options for transportation, so our only real option was to rent a f’n huge 26′ uhaul truck to Whitefish, actually went past to Columbia falls. On the way, stopped at Loula’s in Whitefish and had the best Reuben ever! Also got spare brake pads at Glacier Cyclery, and I got new rack bolts as one bolt fell out yesterday… It actually was a difficult convoluted day…

Dropped the truck in Columbia Falls. We ended up camping in an RV park and will resume the route tomorrow. Spent most of the afternoon repacking, setting up, cleaning the eight days of mud off the bikes, and taking a nice cool shower at the RV clubhouse. Will probably walk up the street for Mexican tonight…

We hope the heat will lessen, the smoke clear, and our loins will remain strong!! (What???)