Grain storage. We passed one farm with 40 of these.

We stopped last night because of the storm and saw that today was forecast to be very windy with blowing from the West. Perfect, we thought, and it was a prescient decision. For us, the road (Rte. 2) runs due east so we profited all day long from tailwinds.  I wish we had a spinnaker! There were times we coasted at 24 miles an hour propelled only by the wind at our backs. A greater biking century can not be imagined.

Many of the small towns on our route are on hard times with businesses closed and some buildings abandoned but we were prepared with PB&J sandwiches. At one point we were stopped by a Montana Highway Patrolman and advised to stay on the shoulder. The problem for most of the day was that the shoulder was narrow and, in some places, white line to grass rumble strips but we complied!

We passed through Dunkirk, Devon, Inverness and Kremlin then rolled into Havre, the home of Montana State University Northern and found a hotel room and Pizza Hut. Tomorrow we’re off to Malta with not as much wind in the forecast.

Lots of wheat fields. In the wind the waves were mesmerizing.

Catholic Church in Gildford

60 miles today.  The landscape is rolling and the road good (for a long way there was a very wide shoulder to ride on) so we made good time.

Storm clouds gathering along the “High Line” tracks we are following across Montana.

As we pulled into Shelby for lunch we checked the local weather (our intent was to move on to Chester – another 40 miles or so) and found there was a weather advisory for thunderstorms and hail. So, given that and the fatigue from yesterday, we decided to stop here and checked into the Comfort Inn – inexpensive, great and free wi fi (our crutch and hotel decider), guest laundry … The works. The maw of the stom appears to have missed Shelby but there is rain and thunder rolling around.

We followed a bit of the Lewis and Clark trail (Highway 2) and passed the town of Meriweather and the Lewis High School. The first part of the ride was through the Blackfeet Reservation then Rte. 2 just slides on due East. It is great to make mileage heading east after all the north and south squiggles we’ve been making since we left Washington.

A little roadside color along Rte. 2

About yesterday’s ride on the Road to the Sun:  As I may have mentioned in the short post about it, the ride from Lake McDonald to Logan pass is the equivalent of a category 1 climb in the Tour de France (the guide book said it’s the equivalent of the stage up Les Deux-Alpes. (I repeated a description I heard that the climb to Logan pass was equal to L’Alpe d’Huez but that climb is in fact Hors Categorie – even harder). Yesterday there were a lot of drivers taking advantage of the pass’s opening so the last few miles were a little busy – there’s no shoulder on the windy two lane road but the road surface appears to be new.

As we climbed higher we were in and out of clouds, some so dense you couldn’t see the road ahead.

Winding ever upward, the road truly is, as our Warm Showers host Chuck said, the most beautiful bike ride we’ve ever seen – dense forest gives way to rocky vistas of 8 and 9 thousand feet peaks some still with snow. As we reached the top the wind picked up and it got quite cold but we had been aiming for the Visitors’ Center to warm up and prepare for the long downhill.  Of course, the center was not yet open and I guess we looked pitiful enough because a very nice couple (Mike and Barb from Seattle – also cyclists) invited us into their camper for some much needed heat and some hot cider. Again, the kindness of strangers – a lesson to us all.

The hard climb done, we now head downhill toward the Mississippi

The downhill was indeed freezing – I stuffed a tee shirt under my jacket just to insulate my core – and we made quite a few stops just to keep from shivering. As I mentioned yesterday our route to Browning was taxing and on a day when we needed a lot of TLC at the end of the day, our hotel let us down by not offering the wi fi offered in their sign nor having hot enough water for showers, plus the room was freezing when we got there and took a while to warm up. Our dinner was a gourmand’s treat at Chez Subway and we quickly walked back and jumped right into bed.

We did get a free breakfast out of the deal and made PB and Nutella sandwiches for later.

Still plenty of snow up there. We saw some people with skis and a snowboard.

By the way, if you click on any of the small photos you can see it in large size.

82 miles up and over the Continental Divide. We got up very early and found that the power was out at the lodge so we got dressed and packed in the dark. We climbed the 21 miles to the top of Logan Pass and it was COLD, and even colder going downhill on the East side. Once at the East entrance to the park we decided on an alternate route that ended up being hard climbing through a pretty monotonous landscape but at least there was not much traffic to contend with.

We ended up in Browning on the Blackfeet Reservation and checked into the first motel we could find and that was a mistake. We will post more details when we have a wi-fi connection and will also post stunning photos from around Logan Pass and the snowy mountains.

40 miles on nice roads and no “confusion.”

Our fantastic hosts, Rita and Chuck, started us off with a hot breakfast and coffee this morning (other Warm Showers hosts take notes!). Tom, who also shared in their hospitality, took off early hoping to get 100 miles to the Canadian border on his Great Divide Race today – from the Mexican border with New Mexico all the way to Banff, Alberta, solo, on Park Service roads.

We casually embarked on a very pleasant, short, touring type ride today to Lake McDonald Lodge in Glacier National Park.

We like this message and we guess others do too because litter is a lot less in Montana.

The road was mostly clear with the added benefit that drivers around Whitefish are used to dealing with bikes so the fear factor was lessened quite a bit. We did have an unpleasant 2.5 mile stretch through the forest on a rough gravel road where our speed was minimal but after that we sailed into the Park with smiles on our faces.

Our first views of Lake McDonald.  It doesn’t get better than this!

We planned on taking a rest day tomorrow but now there is uncertainty when Logan Pass over the Continental Divide will be open so at the moment it is unclear when we will leave. There is an alternate route but it’s on the shoulder of Route 2, not something we are excited about. Time, weather, road crews will all tell in then end.

In the meantime, we are happy and very comfortable here in the Lodge.

One of many roadside crosses–there are way too many of these on the roads. Maybe an indication that a 70 mph speed limit on two lane roads is a bit too high.

Our view of Lake McDonald from the Lodge

Our home away from home. Tenting at our “warm showers” hosts in Whitefish

82 miles today.

That figure is as bit misleading since as we tried our best to leave Libby we got (in the words of our rescuer Fred from yesterday) “slightly confused.” The maps we had and our GPS didn’t sync up so we spent a bit of time and distance figuring things out. Google Maps is not always accurate but as a corroborating source it served us today.  We did finally make it out of town after an egg McMuffin equivalent at the local grocery store and sandwich provisions for later in the day. The road we were on paralleled the river and train tracks (the same tracks on which the long trains ran all last night with air horns blasting and, yes, they kept me awake! Train whistles may be a plaintiff sound in the country music vocabulary and each train is different but they are loud!).

After 15 miles on this very quiet road we crossed the river to take an alternate route around Lake Koocanusa (Kootenai+Canada+USA) recommended to us by some Canadian cyclists we met yesterday.

Starting the Lake Koocanusa Alternative Route

It was a very wise choice! The road was longer by 4 or 5 miles but totally our own with no lumber trucks and very little other traffic. There were warnings about grizzly sightings but we saw not a single animal of any sort (except for the vultures, crows and Ospreys). The way was hilly, with a monster up hill at the very beginning of our ride as far as the visitor center for the Libby Dam. After that we had numerous ups and downs for 45 miles but, as I said, we had the road to ourselves so could often ride side by side… And actually talk instead of listening for approaching cars and trucks.

Libby Dam

We’ve settled on a good food plan so integrate breaks with lunch and/or bananas and good old Cliff Bars.

Lunch al fresca

So… After 45 miles we crossed the river on a new and very wide bridge high above the river. The cross wind was impressive and being more or less alone on that long span with the wind actually singing through the railings was a little surreal. After the bridge we had 16 miles or so to Eureka but, once again, we had to navigate carefully the space on the shoulder between the rumble strips and the loose gravel with cars and trucks whizzing by at 70 miles an hour (not a relaxing bicycle ride).

The last miles into Eureka had no shoulder at all and, as you might expect at the shank end of a long day we were not in a good mental space to deal with the cars.  Anyway, we made it to Eureka and, trusting Apple Maps, road down a long hill all the way through town in hopes of finding our hotel.  Predictably, once we asked at the gas station we were told that the hotel was, in reality, at the upper end of town so, not happy, we biked back up the long hill and checked into a hotel. Only then did we find that this place had no wi-fi!  (Really! I say.) So we rode a little farther and got a room with wi fi at a different place. Gambling is legal in Montana so every little place (hotel, restaurant etc.) has a “casino” – they really only offer one armed bandits and computer poker etc.

We are fed and back in our room and will head to Whitefish tomorrow and will stay with another Warm Showers host.

After a good night’s rest we loaded all our panniers (a place for everything …) and biked to the local bakery/cafe for breakfast burritos, sandwiches for lunch and some trail mix. Then we hit the road in a light rain. The forecast was rain all day but that never materialized, it was just clouds and cool temps. We took an alternate route that paralleled the horrible Hwy. 200 and were soon zipping through fields and farms and entered Montana.

Typical scenery for the day

The last mile or so of this road before it re-joined the 200 was gravel and the joy of zooming downhill was tempered by the washboard road and occasional potholes. Rounding a bend we flew into and out of the town of Heron where we had our first dog chasing incident of the trip… It all ended well when he/she saw we were pretty fast prey! The road continued in gravel and we went up and down for a while until we realized we should have turned left before even getting into Heron. We stood at a Y in the road trying to figure out where we were and how to get back on track – retracing our route back down and up was not appealing. Along the road came a beat up pick up and we flagged the driver down to ask for help since we were “lost.”

“You’re never lost,” he said. “Only slightly confused!” His name is Fred and he lives off the grid at the end of that gravel road. Without any hesitation he cleared space for our bikes in the tool-and-equipment-filled bed of his truck and lashed everything in securely.

Fred tying in our bikes

We crowded into the cab (it was a mini pick up) and Fred drove us back into Heron where we unloaded at the turn we should have made in the first place. As we thanked him for his kindness he said he wondered why God had made him leave his house at that time today. I guess it was to help us!

The rest of the ride was quiet on a nice road leading to Libby. We stopped outside of town and Maja walked down to the Kootenai Falls (think DiCaprio’s escape over the falls in the Revenant…

Kootenai Falls as we saw them

Leo DiCaprio’s character shooting the rapids at Kootenai Falls in The Revenant.

The scene was filmed at Kootenai). We are camping at the Two Bit Campground in Libby and head for Eureka tomorrow and are now in the Mountain time zone.