"I had to unload my firearms before I brought them in"
Caramel Pig
Peddling the Dirt across North America
Wild Animals
Stage 3.1
New Meadows, Idaho – Missoula, Montana
264.53 Miles – 423.24 Kilometres
Total distance ridden 1046.02 Miles – 1675.23 Kilometres
We rose at 5:45 a.m. and hit the cafe at 6 a.m. Purchased two coffees, a Thermos of hot water and four bottles of ice, then returned to the motel and had breakfast.
It was a beautiful, misty and cow-ridden start to the day. I videoed myself singing my way through the 45th parallel. It was simply a magical musical morning.
So many people had warned us how dangerous this 33 mile downhill section was, apparently cyclists had lost their lives here. It was nothing, we zoomed through effortlessly. The road was beautiful, quiet, winding and again downhill. We had a narrow, fast-flowing river alternating over our shoulders. And at one stage the two of us were even politely passed by a V8 Dodge Ram full of smiling faces.
Weekly I recorded a vlog called the Wee Wednesday Blether. In my last entry I had stated that Dodge Ram drivers were simply the most dangerous drivers on the road; that opinion never changed during the whole trip. Two notable exceptions to this rule were our friend driving us into Astoria and the aforementioned driver. If the Dodge Rams were shining upon us, then the day was going to be good.
We glided alongside the Little Salmon River all the way into Riggins. We did not need a break, but stumbled across a wee cafe with uncomfortable looking European-style seating out the front. The combination of coffee and Europe was an instant heart jerker causing us to brake hard and investigate.
Walking in the door, the first thing I noticed was that they actually had an operating coffee roaster in the back room. This instantly got my hopes up, I hadn't seen a bean that wasn't burnt since leaving Lithuania. I walked straight into the roastery and asked the man plying his trade if he did a light roast. Five minutes later, I danced out of Two Rivers Coffee Roasters grinning ear to ear with two very average cups of their Signature Blend and a bag of lightly roasted freshly ground coffee. I was one happy chappie.
The river widened and the day grew hotter. Unable to find shade, we sweated and ate our lunch at a launching ramp amongst canoeists. It was great to watch another genre of people as absorbed in their sport as we were in ours. We bumped into a couple of Brits at a Ranger Station near the old 95 and enjoyed a cold drink of water with them.
Relatively tired, we rode on and bumped into the equally tired-looking town of White Bird. There was a scuzzy town park there, it was all we had so we settled on spending the night. Sharon wandered across the road to buy a beer and chips to celebrate my birthday again. The bar lady kindly suggested that we camp closer to the pub. It scared me a little that she would suggest this. Sharon went for a wee walk up the road and I recorded a video message for a friend in Lithuania. Whilst I was doing this, someone shouted out their window at me, “f- off bum”, wow what a compliment. I kind of liked being called a bum, however the whole tired town was beginning to look stunningly unsafe and dodgy.
Sharon returned with the news that the Baptist church up the road was holding a Bible study this evening so we decided to check it out. Once again it was an interesting study with nice people. At the end of the evening they offered us the church floor for the night. No showers, but toilet, sink, kitchen and refuge from the town park and pub. We were enormously grateful.
The electricity was off when we woke. This meant we had to use our now-broken stove to make our coffee. I had ordered replacement parts from Boise and was hoping to pick them up from a Warmshowers host the next day. No sooner had I lit our Trangia, than it burst into flames. Grrr, I quickly turned off the gas and next thing we knew the electricity turned itself back on. So back inside to boil the kettle and try our new, light roasted coffee. It was fantastic, full and flavoursome. It even passed the Sharon test.
The next 20 km were some of the most enjoyable riding I have ever done. It was a 870 metre climb with a maximum grade of 20 per cent. It just went up and up and up. Switchback after switchback, we climbed and climbed, laughed and sweated. The day was dry and cool and for most of it there was no cars, so rather perfect. Right near the top we bumped into an extended family all on bikes, tandems or in trailers. There were four generations of them all whizzing down the hill, they were a beautiful sight to see.
From here we meandered into the outskirts of Grangeville where we bumped into those Brits again. However we couldn't hang out, the Warmshowers host we had had our stove replacement sent to had informed me that she was about to go out and I needed to collect it now or later on that night. We plugged her address into our phone and dragged our heavy rides hectically along undulating city streets. I dumped my bike at the curb under some old leafy tree, ran up the stairs and banged on the door. A distant voice beckoned me to 'just come in'. Hesitantly I opened the door to be greeted by a dark room. There was a woman wrapped in an apron cooking. She said, “I'm busy, it is in our room beside the bed, my husband opened it”. Still cleated, I walked into her even darker and slightly dank bedroom, stumbled around until I found an open bubble bag, grabbed it, checked everything was there, cried “thanks” and made a run for it. It was a totally weird experience.
After a quick supermarket stop, we ended up at a beautiful park surrounding a swimming pool. The town was so nice and the day so pleasant that we spent much longer than necessary over lunch and lamented having to carry on.
Adventure Cycling took us over some lovely quiet back roads towards Stites. We were not in the mood for back roads with straight punchy little climbs, we wanted flat busy roads that delivered us quickly. We happened upon a nasty descent covered in loose gravel, it was so steep that Sharon refused to cycle down it. We were relieved when we finally crossed the South Fork Clearwater River into town. We found a public toilet at the edge of a manky park. The shop was closed, so after accepting fresh cold water from a local we decided to ride on and take our chances in the next settlement.
Kooskia was a lovely little place that supported a decent supermarket with other tour cyclists congregating out the front. Some guys from Jersey informed us that five minutes up the road was the River Junction RV Park and that it had hot showers. Perfect, we had not had showers since New Meadows.
The RV Park was well and truly on the scuzzy end of things, but never mind, the tent went up and Sharon found some change and rushed to the shower. Once she had finished, I dashed to the shower, slotted my coin in the machine and turned it. It swallowed my money but didn't spit out any water. I put more money in and tried again, still no water. We had paid by an honesty box, there didn't seem to be any kind of camp warden around, so I just sucked it up and dragged my now cranky body to bed.
The next day was a beautiful and easy climb following U.S. Route 12, it was the start of three days of uphill and a day descending. We followed the Clearwater, Middle Fork Clearwater and Lochsa Rivers. They were fast flowing, crystal clear and absolutely gorgeous. The road was tree-lined, narrow and windy with very few cars. It was a stunning ride. We stopped for second breakfast at a small closed restaurant where a lovely lady sold us a single roll of toilet paper. Further up the road we stopped at the cafe/convenience store in Lowell for a cold Root Beer and to use their internet. My maps were not behaving and the internet was not good enough to download new ones, never mind the sun was shining and the people were friendly.
Bang on lunchtime we pulled under the forest canopy at Apgar Campground. This was a beautiful spot right on the bend of the river. We were very quick to nip in for a swim. The place was clean, quiet and the people were friendly. We hit the hay nice and early and had great sleep.
The next day was a long one, all of it on a gradual ascent, but once again the scenery was absolutely stunning. For some reason there were heaps of monarch butterflies, one of which landed right on my handlebars. Often we were riding to a melody of running river water and birdsong.
We attempted to 'hootin' owl' the day. This means ride early in the cool of the morn and then ride late in the cool of the night. We stopped and spent a couple of hours at the Warm Springs Pack Bridge. We crossed the bridge, spent a few minutes bathing in the freezing river and the rest of the time lounging in hot afternoon sun. It was a lovely afternoon, but an epic fail - it was still stinkin' hot when we rode off.
The final 10 miles riding though the heat of the afternoon was saved again by the extreme beauty of this river valley. We spent the night camped on manicured green grass at the very classy Lochsa Lodge. There were heaps of cyclists there raising all sorts of interesting tents around a bevy of brown log cabins including a small store and large restaurant. Their toilets were clean and roomy, I was able to get in there and thoroughly clean my pits and bits. It wasn't quite a shower, but it helped a lot. My stomach was a bit dicky, I probably spent about 30 minutes in that wee windowless room and by the time I left the stench was so bad that I doubt anyone would have gotten close to it for the next few hours. Such are the joys of too much dodgy food and much exercise.
The camping was free, this meant we were able to go into their large expensive restaurant and buy the cheapest thing on the menu: deep-fried salty carbohydrates otherwise known as fries. We felt classy seated at their posh table and tried to spin the meal out for as long as possible, but alas we were cyclist lunatic hungry and wolfed them down in about two minutes. They did set us up for a contented, deep and comfortable sleep.
The morning greeted us with the excited knowledge that this was to be a summit day. By now we had learned that we love vicious steep climbs and that our stubborn personalities exalted in the grunt, gratitude, pain and pleasure of a four-hour ugly incline. And this sprightly spruce bash did not let us down. Last night's oily chips earned their keep and before we knew it, we had succeeded the summit.
We stopped and cooked our lunch at the Lolo Pass Visitor Centre which was perched right on top of the Bitterroot Mountains. It was quite hot, so we cooked quickly and ran under a shaded veranda to eat. Sharon noticed a scratching sound and casually mentioned that there were animals on our bikes. Indeed she was right, there was a scurry of very cute Canadian Ground Squirrels trying to burrow into our panniers. The rest of our lunch was spent at the same time shooing them away and encouraging them to pose for my camera; both ventures were successful.
Full and cool, we moseyed into the information centre for free coffee, to read about the Lewis & Clark Trail and gather intel on the road ahead. One of the things I was keen to learn about was the hot thermal pools at the bottom of the hill. I saw them as a chance to both get a shower and ease our aching, abused and much-used muscles. After asking the lovely lady at the desk, she produced two free passes. Oh this was good, so very, very good.
We jumped on our bikes as about 100 Harley-Davidsons pulled in. A couple kindly stopped and took our photos in front of the sticker-plastered 'Welcome to Montana' sign. The descent was magical. Soft afternoon light filtered through pines, pretty little wild flowers, blue skies with cute puffy clouds and dozens and dozens of screaming Harleys leaving a trail of gasoline stench in their wake. As they revved past me, I defiantly thrust my left hand in the air and gave them the Hog salute. They responded with tooting, hooting and hollering, and raising their thumbs and pinkies in the air. It was a scream and provided unnecessary entertainment for a quick twisty downhill.
I was windblown, in high spirits and smelly when we arrived at the hot pools. I bounced on up to the reception with unbridled enthusiasm and stopped happily and suddenly at the front counter. Unfortunately for the lady serving me, my stench did not stop with me. She peered over her counter, twitched her nose and started explaining that we needed to take a shower before entering the pools. Then she looked even more alarmed when she realised that I was almost peeing myself with excitement at the thought of standing under hot running water. And yes, I did enjoy that shower much more than I did the hot pools. All in all, we spent a good few hours soaking and swimming and as if this wasn't enough, the receptionist offered us a camp spot on her land and gave us two vouchers for a free drink from the local bar. So we sat outside, cooked lunch and washed it down with a can of root beer.
We wanted to get a few more miles under our belt, so passed up on the accommodation and sailed off down the hill to the Lolo Creek Campground.
The campground was nice, we found a lovely spot hidden among the trees. Our camp host was a cyclist from California and because we were cyclists he waived the camp fees for our Bristol British cycling friends Nat and Laura, and us. Our host absolutely despised his 45th President and we spent the evening being both entertained and slightly shocked by his flamboyant political views.
Just before heading to bed, the word went out for us to put our food in their bear-bin. It was full so our camp host helpfully suggested we lock our food in the canopy of his pickup. We had yet another good sleep and in the morning heard from Laura that there had indeed been a bear in the camp. Thankful for our host's truck, I ambled over to collect our food and toiletry bags. There were a couple of holes in our food bag and most of our oats were gone. The bear didn't get our food, but pesky little mice did. When I told our host that he had mice in his wagon, his reply was 'I know'. Grrr, it would have been nice to have known this earlier. They had eaten right through our good dry-bag, which would now need to be replaced and quite quickly.
The morning's ride greeted us with an easy 18 mile downhill to the petrol station at Lolo, where we purchased yoghurt for second breakfast. When speaking to each other, Sharon and I do not use the words 'second breakfast', we use the Visayan word for breakfast, which is panihapon. It is a wee nod to our time spent feeding children on a Filipino island.
One of the joys of cycling is that we really get familiar and comfortable with our own company. One of the tragic side effects of this is that people become really irritating. We were sitting on the edge of a cycle path watching cars peacefully pass when a couple of cyclists stopped to ask us the seemingly-formatted, handbooked, bugging-cyclist questions.
The cycle path into the city was the first taste we had of this hidden gem. Missoula can best be described as a part of loopy coastal Oregon that escaped eastward and camped itself in the middle of Montana. I mean, the rest of the state can be best described as desolate, isolated, empty, bleak, exceedingly hot, Trump-worshipping and Bible-thumping. But Missoula, it is the light roast amongst oily burnt beans.
Our first stop was an outdoor store which, judging by the amount of guns in it, also seemed to supply most of the major arsenal for the country's military. A sign out the front told me that I had to unload my firearms before I brought them in. I chose to leave our bear spray outside. At great expense, we replaced our mouse-eaten dry bag.
From here we cycled directly to the United State's cyclists' Capitol Building, aka the Adventure Cycling Association headquarters.
Oh what a special treat this place was. We were hot, tired and sick of negotiating city streets. We were greeted at the front door by a lovely woman who unlocked a gate, encouraged us to wheel in our bikes and informed us we didn't really need to lock them and that our panniers would be safe if left on. Perfect! Then she ushered us inside where we were greeted by a man who quickly gave us a cold drink and an ice-cream. Perfect! The air-conditioning was turned up. Perfect! The room was full of other cyclists who didn't ask irritating questions. Perfect! There were couches and cycling books to read. Perfect! There were also bikes and bike parts to look at and buy. Perfect! All the staff were great.
After they had waited for us to cool down and relax and after they had waited for us to stop jumping with the excitement of a two-year-old, they calmly offered us a tour of their building. My highlight was seeing the room where our maps were made. I cannot recommend A.C.A maps enough. They were expensive when we purchased them, but gosh they made our lives so, so much easier. At the end of our tour, we got our official A.C.A photo taken and our bikes weighed. It was a hot day so we had plenty of water on our bikes and were probably a bit heavier than usual. My bike weighed in at 56 kg or 123 pounds and Sharon's bike was 41 kg or 90 pounds.
We'd had a hard time finding a place to stay in Missoula, but eventually a friend of a friend came through for us. We had wanted to stay with someone who was willing to share their Independence Day celebrations with us.
Google led us to his home, he was at work, so we let ourselves in, showered and cooked oats for lunch. After lunch we split up, Sharon found a laundrette and I a bike shop. This was a scheduled service for our bikes. Sharon's gear cable broke whilst getting serviced. I was so thankful for this because it meant I did not have to change it on the side of the road or that we did not have to faff round looking for a bike shop at a later date.
We carry too many clothes with us. We like to have a clean shirt and pair of undies every riding day, the fruit of this is a large weekly wash. Our poor host. When he arrived home, he was greeted by two tired strangers sitting on the front balcony of his shared rented home that we had covered in temporary clotheslines with almost all our cycling attire attached. Clothes on clotheslines seem to be a very un-American thing.
We finished the day and we finished the stage in a rather cool bar enjoying a Montana IPA. So far we were totally and utterly loving Montana and were looking forward to the Rockies.
New Meadows, Idaho – Missoula, Montana
264.53 Miles – 423.24 Kilometres
Total distance ridden 1046.02 Miles – 1675.23 Kilometres
We rose at 5:45 a.m. and hit the cafe at 6 a.m. Purchased two coffees, a Thermos of hot water and four bottles of ice, then returned to the motel and had breakfast.
It was a beautiful, misty and cow-ridden start to the day. I videoed myself singing my way through the 45th parallel. It was simply a magical musical morning.
So many people had warned us how dangerous this 33 mile downhill section was, apparently cyclists had lost their lives here. It was nothing, we zoomed through effortlessly. The road was beautiful, quiet, winding and again downhill. We had a narrow, fast-flowing river alternating over our shoulders. And at one stage the two of us were even politely passed by a V8 Dodge Ram full of smiling faces.
Weekly I recorded a vlog called the Wee Wednesday Blether. In my last entry I had stated that Dodge Ram drivers were simply the most dangerous drivers on the road; that opinion never changed during the whole trip. Two notable exceptions to this rule were our friend driving us into Astoria and the aforementioned driver. If the Dodge Rams were shining upon us, then the day was going to be good.
We glided alongside the Little Salmon River all the way into Riggins. We did not need a break, but stumbled across a wee cafe with uncomfortable looking European-style seating out the front. The combination of coffee and Europe was an instant heart jerker causing us to brake hard and investigate.
Walking in the door, the first thing I noticed was that they actually had an operating coffee roaster in the back room. This instantly got my hopes up, I hadn't seen a bean that wasn't burnt since leaving Lithuania. I walked straight into the roastery and asked the man plying his trade if he did a light roast. Five minutes later, I danced out of Two Rivers Coffee Roasters grinning ear to ear with two very average cups of their Signature Blend and a bag of lightly roasted freshly ground coffee. I was one happy chappie.
The river widened and the day grew hotter. Unable to find shade, we sweated and ate our lunch at a launching ramp amongst canoeists. It was great to watch another genre of people as absorbed in their sport as we were in ours. We bumped into a couple of Brits at a Ranger Station near the old 95 and enjoyed a cold drink of water with them.
Relatively tired, we rode on and bumped into the equally tired-looking town of White Bird. There was a scuzzy town park there, it was all we had so we settled on spending the night. Sharon wandered across the road to buy a beer and chips to celebrate my birthday again. The bar lady kindly suggested that we camp closer to the pub. It scared me a little that she would suggest this. Sharon went for a wee walk up the road and I recorded a video message for a friend in Lithuania. Whilst I was doing this, someone shouted out their window at me, “f- off bum”, wow what a compliment. I kind of liked being called a bum, however the whole tired town was beginning to look stunningly unsafe and dodgy.
Sharon returned with the news that the Baptist church up the road was holding a Bible study this evening so we decided to check it out. Once again it was an interesting study with nice people. At the end of the evening they offered us the church floor for the night. No showers, but toilet, sink, kitchen and refuge from the town park and pub. We were enormously grateful.
The electricity was off when we woke. This meant we had to use our now-broken stove to make our coffee. I had ordered replacement parts from Boise and was hoping to pick them up from a Warmshowers host the next day. No sooner had I lit our Trangia, than it burst into flames. Grrr, I quickly turned off the gas and next thing we knew the electricity turned itself back on. So back inside to boil the kettle and try our new, light roasted coffee. It was fantastic, full and flavoursome. It even passed the Sharon test.
The next 20 km were some of the most enjoyable riding I have ever done. It was a 870 metre climb with a maximum grade of 20 per cent. It just went up and up and up. Switchback after switchback, we climbed and climbed, laughed and sweated. The day was dry and cool and for most of it there was no cars, so rather perfect. Right near the top we bumped into an extended family all on bikes, tandems or in trailers. There were four generations of them all whizzing down the hill, they were a beautiful sight to see.
From here we meandered into the outskirts of Grangeville where we bumped into those Brits again. However we couldn't hang out, the Warmshowers host we had had our stove replacement sent to had informed me that she was about to go out and I needed to collect it now or later on that night. We plugged her address into our phone and dragged our heavy rides hectically along undulating city streets. I dumped my bike at the curb under some old leafy tree, ran up the stairs and banged on the door. A distant voice beckoned me to 'just come in'. Hesitantly I opened the door to be greeted by a dark room. There was a woman wrapped in an apron cooking. She said, “I'm busy, it is in our room beside the bed, my husband opened it”. Still cleated, I walked into her even darker and slightly dank bedroom, stumbled around until I found an open bubble bag, grabbed it, checked everything was there, cried “thanks” and made a run for it. It was a totally weird experience.
After a quick supermarket stop, we ended up at a beautiful park surrounding a swimming pool. The town was so nice and the day so pleasant that we spent much longer than necessary over lunch and lamented having to carry on.
Adventure Cycling took us over some lovely quiet back roads towards Stites. We were not in the mood for back roads with straight punchy little climbs, we wanted flat busy roads that delivered us quickly. We happened upon a nasty descent covered in loose gravel, it was so steep that Sharon refused to cycle down it. We were relieved when we finally crossed the South Fork Clearwater River into town. We found a public toilet at the edge of a manky park. The shop was closed, so after accepting fresh cold water from a local we decided to ride on and take our chances in the next settlement.
Kooskia was a lovely little place that supported a decent supermarket with other tour cyclists congregating out the front. Some guys from Jersey informed us that five minutes up the road was the River Junction RV Park and that it had hot showers. Perfect, we had not had showers since New Meadows.
The RV Park was well and truly on the scuzzy end of things, but never mind, the tent went up and Sharon found some change and rushed to the shower. Once she had finished, I dashed to the shower, slotted my coin in the machine and turned it. It swallowed my money but didn't spit out any water. I put more money in and tried again, still no water. We had paid by an honesty box, there didn't seem to be any kind of camp warden around, so I just sucked it up and dragged my now cranky body to bed.
The next day was a beautiful and easy climb following U.S. Route 12, it was the start of three days of uphill and a day descending. We followed the Clearwater, Middle Fork Clearwater and Lochsa Rivers. They were fast flowing, crystal clear and absolutely gorgeous. The road was tree-lined, narrow and windy with very few cars. It was a stunning ride. We stopped for second breakfast at a small closed restaurant where a lovely lady sold us a single roll of toilet paper. Further up the road we stopped at the cafe/convenience store in Lowell for a cold Root Beer and to use their internet. My maps were not behaving and the internet was not good enough to download new ones, never mind the sun was shining and the people were friendly.
Bang on lunchtime we pulled under the forest canopy at Apgar Campground. This was a beautiful spot right on the bend of the river. We were very quick to nip in for a swim. The place was clean, quiet and the people were friendly. We hit the hay nice and early and had great sleep.
The next day was a long one, all of it on a gradual ascent, but once again the scenery was absolutely stunning. For some reason there were heaps of monarch butterflies, one of which landed right on my handlebars. Often we were riding to a melody of running river water and birdsong.
We attempted to 'hootin' owl' the day. This means ride early in the cool of the morn and then ride late in the cool of the night. We stopped and spent a couple of hours at the Warm Springs Pack Bridge. We crossed the bridge, spent a few minutes bathing in the freezing river and the rest of the time lounging in hot afternoon sun. It was a lovely afternoon, but an epic fail - it was still stinkin' hot when we rode off.
The final 10 miles riding though the heat of the afternoon was saved again by the extreme beauty of this river valley. We spent the night camped on manicured green grass at the very classy Lochsa Lodge. There were heaps of cyclists there raising all sorts of interesting tents around a bevy of brown log cabins including a small store and large restaurant. Their toilets were clean and roomy, I was able to get in there and thoroughly clean my pits and bits. It wasn't quite a shower, but it helped a lot. My stomach was a bit dicky, I probably spent about 30 minutes in that wee windowless room and by the time I left the stench was so bad that I doubt anyone would have gotten close to it for the next few hours. Such are the joys of too much dodgy food and much exercise.
The camping was free, this meant we were able to go into their large expensive restaurant and buy the cheapest thing on the menu: deep-fried salty carbohydrates otherwise known as fries. We felt classy seated at their posh table and tried to spin the meal out for as long as possible, but alas we were cyclist lunatic hungry and wolfed them down in about two minutes. They did set us up for a contented, deep and comfortable sleep.
The morning greeted us with the excited knowledge that this was to be a summit day. By now we had learned that we love vicious steep climbs and that our stubborn personalities exalted in the grunt, gratitude, pain and pleasure of a four-hour ugly incline. And this sprightly spruce bash did not let us down. Last night's oily chips earned their keep and before we knew it, we had succeeded the summit.
We stopped and cooked our lunch at the Lolo Pass Visitor Centre which was perched right on top of the Bitterroot Mountains. It was quite hot, so we cooked quickly and ran under a shaded veranda to eat. Sharon noticed a scratching sound and casually mentioned that there were animals on our bikes. Indeed she was right, there was a scurry of very cute Canadian Ground Squirrels trying to burrow into our panniers. The rest of our lunch was spent at the same time shooing them away and encouraging them to pose for my camera; both ventures were successful.
Full and cool, we moseyed into the information centre for free coffee, to read about the Lewis & Clark Trail and gather intel on the road ahead. One of the things I was keen to learn about was the hot thermal pools at the bottom of the hill. I saw them as a chance to both get a shower and ease our aching, abused and much-used muscles. After asking the lovely lady at the desk, she produced two free passes. Oh this was good, so very, very good.
We jumped on our bikes as about 100 Harley-Davidsons pulled in. A couple kindly stopped and took our photos in front of the sticker-plastered 'Welcome to Montana' sign. The descent was magical. Soft afternoon light filtered through pines, pretty little wild flowers, blue skies with cute puffy clouds and dozens and dozens of screaming Harleys leaving a trail of gasoline stench in their wake. As they revved past me, I defiantly thrust my left hand in the air and gave them the Hog salute. They responded with tooting, hooting and hollering, and raising their thumbs and pinkies in the air. It was a scream and provided unnecessary entertainment for a quick twisty downhill.
I was windblown, in high spirits and smelly when we arrived at the hot pools. I bounced on up to the reception with unbridled enthusiasm and stopped happily and suddenly at the front counter. Unfortunately for the lady serving me, my stench did not stop with me. She peered over her counter, twitched her nose and started explaining that we needed to take a shower before entering the pools. Then she looked even more alarmed when she realised that I was almost peeing myself with excitement at the thought of standing under hot running water. And yes, I did enjoy that shower much more than I did the hot pools. All in all, we spent a good few hours soaking and swimming and as if this wasn't enough, the receptionist offered us a camp spot on her land and gave us two vouchers for a free drink from the local bar. So we sat outside, cooked lunch and washed it down with a can of root beer.
We wanted to get a few more miles under our belt, so passed up on the accommodation and sailed off down the hill to the Lolo Creek Campground.
The campground was nice, we found a lovely spot hidden among the trees. Our camp host was a cyclist from California and because we were cyclists he waived the camp fees for our Bristol British cycling friends Nat and Laura, and us. Our host absolutely despised his 45th President and we spent the evening being both entertained and slightly shocked by his flamboyant political views.
Just before heading to bed, the word went out for us to put our food in their bear-bin. It was full so our camp host helpfully suggested we lock our food in the canopy of his pickup. We had yet another good sleep and in the morning heard from Laura that there had indeed been a bear in the camp. Thankful for our host's truck, I ambled over to collect our food and toiletry bags. There were a couple of holes in our food bag and most of our oats were gone. The bear didn't get our food, but pesky little mice did. When I told our host that he had mice in his wagon, his reply was 'I know'. Grrr, it would have been nice to have known this earlier. They had eaten right through our good dry-bag, which would now need to be replaced and quite quickly.
The morning's ride greeted us with an easy 18 mile downhill to the petrol station at Lolo, where we purchased yoghurt for second breakfast. When speaking to each other, Sharon and I do not use the words 'second breakfast', we use the Visayan word for breakfast, which is panihapon. It is a wee nod to our time spent feeding children on a Filipino island.
One of the joys of cycling is that we really get familiar and comfortable with our own company. One of the tragic side effects of this is that people become really irritating. We were sitting on the edge of a cycle path watching cars peacefully pass when a couple of cyclists stopped to ask us the seemingly-formatted, handbooked, bugging-cyclist questions.
- Where are you from?
- Where have you cycled from?
- Where are you going?
- How far do you go a day?
- Where do you sleep?
The cycle path into the city was the first taste we had of this hidden gem. Missoula can best be described as a part of loopy coastal Oregon that escaped eastward and camped itself in the middle of Montana. I mean, the rest of the state can be best described as desolate, isolated, empty, bleak, exceedingly hot, Trump-worshipping and Bible-thumping. But Missoula, it is the light roast amongst oily burnt beans.
Our first stop was an outdoor store which, judging by the amount of guns in it, also seemed to supply most of the major arsenal for the country's military. A sign out the front told me that I had to unload my firearms before I brought them in. I chose to leave our bear spray outside. At great expense, we replaced our mouse-eaten dry bag.
From here we cycled directly to the United State's cyclists' Capitol Building, aka the Adventure Cycling Association headquarters.
Oh what a special treat this place was. We were hot, tired and sick of negotiating city streets. We were greeted at the front door by a lovely woman who unlocked a gate, encouraged us to wheel in our bikes and informed us we didn't really need to lock them and that our panniers would be safe if left on. Perfect! Then she ushered us inside where we were greeted by a man who quickly gave us a cold drink and an ice-cream. Perfect! The air-conditioning was turned up. Perfect! The room was full of other cyclists who didn't ask irritating questions. Perfect! There were couches and cycling books to read. Perfect! There were also bikes and bike parts to look at and buy. Perfect! All the staff were great.
After they had waited for us to cool down and relax and after they had waited for us to stop jumping with the excitement of a two-year-old, they calmly offered us a tour of their building. My highlight was seeing the room where our maps were made. I cannot recommend A.C.A maps enough. They were expensive when we purchased them, but gosh they made our lives so, so much easier. At the end of our tour, we got our official A.C.A photo taken and our bikes weighed. It was a hot day so we had plenty of water on our bikes and were probably a bit heavier than usual. My bike weighed in at 56 kg or 123 pounds and Sharon's bike was 41 kg or 90 pounds.
We'd had a hard time finding a place to stay in Missoula, but eventually a friend of a friend came through for us. We had wanted to stay with someone who was willing to share their Independence Day celebrations with us.
Google led us to his home, he was at work, so we let ourselves in, showered and cooked oats for lunch. After lunch we split up, Sharon found a laundrette and I a bike shop. This was a scheduled service for our bikes. Sharon's gear cable broke whilst getting serviced. I was so thankful for this because it meant I did not have to change it on the side of the road or that we did not have to faff round looking for a bike shop at a later date.
We carry too many clothes with us. We like to have a clean shirt and pair of undies every riding day, the fruit of this is a large weekly wash. Our poor host. When he arrived home, he was greeted by two tired strangers sitting on the front balcony of his shared rented home that we had covered in temporary clotheslines with almost all our cycling attire attached. Clothes on clotheslines seem to be a very un-American thing.
We finished the day and we finished the stage in a rather cool bar enjoying a Montana IPA. So far we were totally and utterly loving Montana and were looking forward to the Rockies.
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