Day 31 road 74 miles!

Well it has officially been 1 month since we have been on the road! We had decided the to camp at the Havre RV park, and we chose wrong!!! After we had paid they instructed us that we could only camp in one area, wedged between the casino and gas station, oh and behind the train tracks...  with the parking spaces facing our tents.  It was like we were the main attraction, "come look at the cyclist, oh and can you keep them up all night!" Needless to say we slept horribly/not at all!! So a very tired and grumpy 3 hit the road on their way to Dodson MT. There was a head wind the entire way... Blah! The views where better today, still mostly flat with rolling hills, but we met up with the Milk River so now we have Cotton Wood trees to break up the horizon. We stopped in Harlem for lunch, another poor choice :(  Matt's egg sandwich was simple mayo and diced hard boiled egg!  So we went to the grocery to get food to make dinner (no stores in Dodson, MT) and some snacks to finish off the lunch hunger pains.   We stayed in a BnB that lets you camp on the lawn... Very nice!  We're all tired from the crappy Best Western RV lawn and the headwinds.

Worst lunch so far!

This may be are way home ...looks a lot faster and easier

Day 30 road 64 miles to the bike shop

6am and the loons on Matt's phone are waking us up again.  It was cool again this morning so we all donned our cold weather bicycle gear.  Had our usual wonderful breakfast of oatmeal, nuts, powder milk, raisins and craisens, tea and headed to Havre MT. It took us only 15 minutes and 4.5 miles of a 1-2% grade to shed all of our cold weather gear!! The landscape only seems to be getting flatter, I can see for miles and miles!  Actually it gets a bit boring.  Look, over there! Is that a tree!! OMG ... its another grain silo. Look! another field of wheat/barley! There weren't too many towns to stop at along the way, most have populations of less than 400. One didn't even have paved streets, So we ate our fruit, cliff bars, and pb sandwiches at a bar in Hingman. We had lots of friendly honks and waves from people passing on US-2! We rode into Havre at 1:30 set up camp at a Conaco/BestWestern/Casino, tonight should be interesting. Matt and Kayleen meandered to the bike shop to have the new derailleur fine tuned and the rear wheel trued. Only took 45 minutes and it was like brand new!!  Which is good, because it is brand new!  Hopefully this will be the last of our issues.

Do svidaniya! Comrade

Not one of our favorite camps

Day 29... We rocked 102 miles!!

It was a chilly start today, with hopes of making into Shelby to make camp sometime after lunch. Boy did we guess wrong! Made it to our lunch stoop of Cut Bank bo 1030, even with a flat on Kayleen's BOB. We made it into Shelby by noon, had lunch and were ready to ride some more. It is amazing how fast the geography changes, just the other day we were in the Rockies, then looking back at them, now we can barely see them! The conditions were perfect, wind at our back at 15-25 and most of the day descending in elevation, temp 75, and average speed of 18mph! So we planned on staying in Galata at 85 miles, but we decided to keep on taking advantage of the beautiful weather/conditions being in our favor and rode 102 miles to Chester, MT. We made it to our campsite by 4pm... wahoo!! We camped at the city park, very nice place. We met 2 recumbent bike riders, who were doing the same route, just east to west. We spent the rest of the night chatting with Paul and Mark. Conversation was great, we exchanged route tips, pictures, things to do, places to stay, and funny stories. They were very nice guys, too bad we couldn't spend more time with them. We wished each other luck and were on our way!!  Good luck, and strong legs to Paul and Mark, they will need them, may the wind be at your backs ... as long as that doesn't make it to our fronts!

Day 28 parts are here!

Parts in hand we broke down and stayed in the only hotel in Browning!  Matt was able to get things back together and we should be good to go tomorrow for our ride to Shelby, MT.  Passed the time today by sitting in Subway from about 11am to 2pm.  Really, it was our best option!

Day 27 waiting on overnighted parts!

We had remembered that the bike store in Whitefish was a Jamis dealer, and they had all the parts we needed to fix the bike! We had them overnighted, and stayed another night at the campground! All the people at the campsite were very nice, but the rest of town was a little scary! So we didn't venture much out of the campsite. We had 2 new friends Lady and missy, two dogs that hung out with us the entire time we were at camp! Very friendly critters.

Day26 oops!!!

We started out on schedule and did well with our 12 mile 6 percent grade climb.  We made it to Logan's Pass by 10.  We had a great ride down and a good lunch in St. Mary's.  Scrapped the map and made our own route to Browning Mt. On MT 464.  Unfortunately, Kayleen's rear derailed fell off her bike and has a broken derailleur hanger.  We were able to get a ride from a very nice fish and game warden the rest of the way to Browning.  Otherwise it would have been a 20 mile walk.  We are camping in Browning, a very very small town tonight and will work on getting the bike fixed tomorrow.  Now watching a lovely sunset.

Day 25 another day in Glacier!

We got up and took off on a 13 mile ride to Avalanche campground.  This put us 13 miles farther up Going to the Sun Road and closer to Logan's Pass for tomorrow.  After settling in, we hopped on the shuttle to Logan's Pass, a much nicer day.  Matt and Kayleen took off to Hidden lake hike and Sally did part of the Highland Trail.  She was rewarded with an up close encounter with three big horn sheep and a viewing of mountain goats and four more big horns.  We got back to camp and had hummus hors d'heurves and dinner and then began to get ready to leave early in the morning for Logan's Pass.  Bikes have to be off the 12 mile uphill by 11am.

Day 24 in Glacier Park!

Saturday in the park.  We planned to hike the Highland trail, but it was snowing at Logan's Pass and very windy, so we hiked at lower elevation along Avalanche Trail.  It was a gorgeous wooded trail.  We did see a bear cub that morning on the ride to Logan's Pass, but that was it for wildlife this day.  We discovered that groceries were so expensive it was almost cheaper to eat out, so we did.  It was definitely warmer!  Temperatures dropped significantly during the day.  A good day visiting Glacier, saw Lake McDonald and the lodge and watched the sunset over the lake.

Day 23 Road 33 miles to Glacier!

Today we rode from Whitefish to Glacier and set up camp at Apgar campground.  The ride had its challenges with unpaved roads and heavy traffic on rt 2 as we entered the park.  Once in the park there was a beautiful bike trail to our campground.   In the afternoon we explored the area and shops and had some huckleberry ice cream.  It was a relaxing day.

 

Day 22

We started out from Eureka in a beautiful cool morning on a side road with little traffic.  In fact, there was so little traffic we ran into a dozen or so cows in the road.  Keeping his form, Matt managed to stampede these poor beasts. (Thats it blame the guy who you're always drafting off!  Besides, here in Big Sky Country it's called cattle driving.  It's only a stamped if you don't have control.  When in cowboy country, drive some cattle! They'll all be steaks and e-coli carrying ground beef soon anyway.) They ran back into their pasture (where they should have been anyway!).  When we looked back they were still running across the field.  We did 56 miles into Whitefish, where we ended up in a motel due to lack of choices.  We spent the afternoon checking out Whitefish, then laundry and shopping in prep for West Glacier tomorrow.  Kayleen and Matt spent some time sampling the local brewery, the first of many.

Mooo ve!!

This is a great improvement on how Sally's leg usually looks at the end of the day

Beer sample at the Great Northern Brewery