A big thank you goes to my niece Allison for helping me get the blog working again. When I tried to blog it just kept saying error loading. This is why the blog is behind and also because there isn't always cell service. This is a BIG country! We took frontage roads along the interstate. These were nice until they ended. We planned our next route and it looked good. Around 30 miles in, the road turn to gravel which was fine. When we got to what we thought was near the top, it turned steeper, narrower and more rocky. Soon we were unable to ride the bikes because they were sliding. We we hesitate telling the next part. The road name should have given us a clue, Stage Coach Road. This was a fourth of July we will never forget! At this point we were dragging our bikes up the mountain. Our feet were sliding backwards along with the bikes. We felt like we were on an extreme endurance reality show. Except this really was our life. We kept saying the next ridge had to be the top but it wasn't. Then we came to a cattle crossing with Bulls on the other side. Bob had on a red shirt so they started coming towards us. This is the point where we almost pressed the family Help button on the SPOT GPS tracking. We were debating our options like if we should spend the night on the mountain and walk out in the morning. Bob and I had both prayed that someone would come up the path when we heard a vehicle coming towards us. When they saw us, they asked if we were okay. Then they told us they were lost also! At least they had a car when they were lost. After talking a while , we loaded Bob's bike and myself and started down the mountain. Bob meanwhile was left at the cattle crossing with my bike and the Burley. He hung his yellow rain jacket on the flag for some shade and to keep the Bulls away. I was with a man and wife . The man had lived in this area years ago and had traveled this road . He wanted to take his wife on a drive but said the road was not like this back then. It got worse and worse and I wondered if the car was going to make it. Bob's front tire was sticking between them in the front seats. He told me he was glad I was in the car or his wife would be yelling at him for driving on such a rocky road. He also couldn't wait to tell his grandkids about how he had rescued bikers from the mountain. What we thought was 3 miles, according to our GPS, turned out to be more like 15. We would have NEVER made it! The second miracle happened part way down when we saw a man in a pickup. He and his family, in one pick up, rescued Bob and his father in another pickup, got my bike and Burley. The three rescue vehicles drove us to the campground in Deer Lodge. Cass, the host at the campground, gave us cold water and told us Pizza Hut would deliver. Yeah! We both felt extremely "beat up" from the intense day. I was so worried about Bob twisting his leg or ankle, because even walking on flat ground can be difficult. Life is full of choices and usually, by our age, we make good ones. Today we made some poor choices . Lessons learned...1. If the road gets rocky turn around 2. Follow Adventure Cycling maps. We are thankful God still has us in the palm of his hand even though we as humans, make mistakes!
Before we left Missoula, we had coffee with some of our new friends. We always lock our bikes and try to put things away that might be tempting. However, we neglected to put away our solar panel and when we came back out it had been stolen. Bummer! This was the day we decided to alter our route and try the interstate. There were pros and cons but we decided the interstate is not for us. The pros were... We were able to ride relatively flat ground and go faster. This was more like back home in Ohio. The cons were... The traffic was so loud we couldn't talk and the scenery wasn't as nice so I didn't take many pictures. Probably the biggest drawback for us was all of the steel belt treads from the tires on the shoulder. A two wheel bike can maneuver around them. We have 8 tires and it was hard to avoid them. Therefore, Bob ended up with two flat tires in a short amount of time. Those tiny steel belts are like needles going into the tires. Yes Jill, we really stayed at a place called Bearmouth RV. The host showed us claw marks in a tree from a bear last year. This was another extremely hot day and the hosts brought us ice and 2 cold 7 up's. Later they brought us more ice so we could have cold water. The closest town was 18 miles either direction. They were also very generous and let us plug things into their camper so we could charge them since we no longer had the solar panel.
Yesterday we rode 51 miles. Today we rode 10 miles into Missoula. That was the scariest 10 miles we have ever ridden. It was a very busy four lane highway with a wide shoulder full of junk. We went to The Adventure Cycling headquarters which is where we purchased our maps for the trip. Many other cyclists were there who we talked to and took a tour of the place. They take your picture and put it up on their wall. We went and had coffee with several other cyclist, did laundry and went to the grocery. A local guy, Bruce, opens his house for cyclist to stay. He lets them use his restrooms and kitchen. There was a girl from Germany, a lady from France, a guy from Israel and many others from all over the country. The night we were there, there were over 10 cyclist camping on his lawn. Several of them told us how they ride on the interstate. This sounded so bizarre to us because in Ohio it is illegal. They said the two lane roads have no shoulder, a speed limit of 70 and trucks. The interstate has a speed limit of 75 and a very wide shoulder with rumble strip in between. Bob's knee has been bothering him so we decided to alter our route and try the interstate to miss some of the big peaks. As we were getting ready for bed I realized I hadn't gotten the name of a guy we had been talking to. So I asked him his name and he said, it is Mel Wade. I said, nice to meet you Well Made. He laughed and said, yes I am but that's not my name. That's when bob said, get in the tent and go to bed!
We rode four miles to a lodge for breakfast at Powell. There were other bikers there who we met and talked to for awhile. Two of them were avid bikers and they hitchhiked the last 20 miles yesterday. That reassured me that we were doing okay because we made it without getting a ride. On the way up to Lolo Pass we heard and indistinguishable sound coming from behind us. We are able at this point to tell what is coming from behind. Bob and I both yelled to get off the road because it sounded big and awful. We tried to flag the camper down after he passed but was unable to do so. His rack on the back had broken so it was dragging on the ground. Tim, one of the bikers we met in the morning who had hitchhiked , told us how he had ran out of water yesterday and climb down the steep bank and drank right out of the river. We told him about the ranger station where we had gotten water. He had seen it but didn't want to climb the hill to see if they had water. At the top of Lolo Pass we saw the same Ranger, told him the story, so he made a note of it and said he would put a sign for the bikers indicating they could get water there. After passing Lolo we crossed into Montana and back into mountain time. The ride down into Lolo was very pleasant with a tail wind and downhill. We found a convenience store, ate supper there, and went to a campground for the night.
We knew this was going to be a very long day. It was also the most beautiful day. There was no gas for 64 miles and nothing in between. There was a gradual uphill the whole way and extreme heat. We drank around 14 water bottles and still could have used more. We ate only from our bike bag. Bob had his first flat tire around 10 miles out. But it wasn't just a tube, the actual tire was peeling. At this point we had ridden a little over 600 miles and have about 1600 miles on these tires. We are carrying spare tires and tubes so we had it changed pretty quickly. We were riding through the largest wilderness area in the US other than Alaska. Locals have told us they go 93 miles, one way, just to get groceries. They love the seclusion and privacy but they cannot get emergency help quickly at all. With no cell service, it is hard to get help if there is an accident. There was an historical ranger station and we stopped there to refill water bottles. Later in the day our water was getting low again and we had pulled over to rest. I prayed that somebody would pull over and have water. Then a family pulled over and I asked them if they had any spare water. Their two daughters very willingly gave up a Gatorade and a water to us. They were cold, not hot! Bob and I had just been talking about how we needed to get some bananas. We were getting very close to the campground and then we saw a Ranger so we stopped. The guy said, hey dudes you are amazing. He said, I'm not a ranger I just have the shirt on. He told us he was Grant from California and he delivers news papers. He said he had bananas (we never mentioned this) so he put two in my lap, two in Bob's lap and more on our Burley. We were hungry so we ate them. Just a little ways down the road we found the USFS (United States Forrest Services) campground and it had water. That was all we cared about. It had a pump to get the water but there was no shower. Another camper came over and told us they had built a "tub" from the rocks in the river and we could use it. We were so tired we just went to bed! We had ridden 61 miles with a gradual upill and heat!
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