Missoula, Montana

We have certainly slowed down. We stayed three nights camped on the Lochsa River, then drove a hundred miles to Missoula and have been here three more nights.

The ride through Idaho was glorious, along the Clearwater River then up the Lochsa. River grades are my favorite kind of ride, they have a gentle grade with lots of sweeper turns that are a blast on the trike. This ride was on Highway 12. When we had passed through Kooskia, ID we were on a road I had first ridden on a bicycle in 1976 and had always remembered as one of the most beautiful stretches of road I had ever seen. The road is just as spectacular as I remembered.

There were 20 miles of really bad riding though. There were over a hundred “speed bumps” created when that many culverts had been replaced and repaved with temporary asphalt humps. We were told that the entire road will be repaved starting in August so they did not try to make the bumps flat. It was a real pain in the ass, literally, riding over them and we were forced to 20 miles an hour or less to cross them all. Even so, the remainder of the hundred miles was worth the effort.

We also got rained on, as usual. A thunderstorm passed through and dumped an inch of rain overnight then it continued to rain off and on all the next day. The tent trailer held up to the heavy deluge pretty well except where we had our luggage leaned against the tent walls. This was contrary to what we had been told when we bought the tent. One of the sellling points was that the material the tent is made from was some hight tech stuff that would not leak even if stuff was against the walls.

We saw a lot of bicycles and motorcycles along the way. This is a popular route through Idaho and is still part of the transamerica bicycle ride.

We also didn’t have much food with us so I was forced to ride back down the road and over all those damn speed bumps two more times to get back to a small grocery store to pick up some food to stay the extra two nights. Our eating habits are often dictated by what those small stores have in stock and this one was particularly lacking in anything healthy to eat. So we had mac and cheese from a box and hot dogs one night, then mashed potatoes and polish sausage the next. They didn’t even have any canned vegetables let alone fresh. Reminded me of the way my mom used to cook on camping trips.

The last couple of days the weather has been perfect with highs in the low eighties and lows in the high fifties. From here we will head north through Kalispell to pick up our mail at general delivery then up to Glacier NP.

I have mentioned before that my eldest was hiking the Continental Divide trail. Well, he came down with an intestinal disorder for which he checked into a hospital to get rehydrated then holed up for a week in hotels. He was forced to abandon the hike and fly home. The good news, for me, is that he is planning to drive back out here and join up with us on some of the road trip so we are looking forward to hooking up with him next week.