56 miles today

Good start this morning after a restful night in the Silverado Hotel in Eureka. We back tracked our in-error route yesterday then at the end of town turned off the highway onto a small road that took us through forests … And no traffic.

After 17 miles or so this pleasant way dumped us back on the highway. It was Sunday so there was not too much traffic and no trucks but the shoulder was narrow.

We had lunch at the post office in Olney and hopped back on the road for the final 20 miles. Sadly, at that point the condition of Route 93 deteriorated badly making the biking very uncomfortable. It seems that everyone in Montana either drives a pick up or is towing some huge camper or trailer causing anxiety every time one passes us particularly if there happens to be oncoming traffic squeezing us all close together.

There are many crosses planted along the road, simple, small steel crosses painted white on 4′ posts. The speed limit on this rough road was 70 and we wondered if reducing the posted speeds might result in fewer crosses.

To make matters worse, the altitude profile we had seen for today’s ride failed to show several of the hills at the very end of our ride. These are the kinds of challenges that make me sigh and say “Really?”

We arrived mid afternoon in Whitefish and found our hosts. Turns out Rita, our host, knows Maja’s swim coach at Dartmouth.  Small world department.

We visited our first Frank Lloyd Wright building of the trip, a small office building he designed for a friend of his in 1958. Wright died in ’59 so never saw the completed building. It has seen quite a bit of remodeling but is still known as “The Frank Lloyd Wright Building.”

Maja’s addendum:

As I look back at our rides, there appear to be two categories:  the “stop and smell the roses rides” and the “get from point A to point B” rides. Today was definitely the latter.  When we started the temps were in the mid 40s, so quite chilly. Luckily, it was partly sunny for the ride, so we warmed up. The ride on the two lane highway with the 70 mph speed limit was white knuckle most of the way. I’m sure the views were very beautiful, be we were totally focused on the road. We were happy to get to Whitefish! Our “warm shower hosts” are great and spoiled us with beer and snacks before we headed into town for dinner. There’s another cyclist staying here: an Aussie who is just about to finish the Mexico to Canada Continental Divide ride all on forest trails/roads. He averages about 100 miles a day. Wow! We also met a really interesting character in Eureka, who I think should be played by Johnny Depp, if there’s ever a movie made about him. He had a coonskin hat (tail and all), and approached us in the parking lot when he saw our bikes.  He had some interesting stories to tell about his architecture as well as fund raising experiences (said he raised $15 million). Very eccentric. We gave him our Bike Wright card.  So our string of meeting interesting people continues. That said, Montana gets demerits from a bike toting pick up driver who made fun of us in Eureka when we asked him for directions to the motel we wanted to stay at and he realized we had biked all the way through town, downhill, only to have to return the same way we came. He certainly takes the “Schadenfreude” award.  Looking forward to a short ride and some rest at Glacier!!!