We woke up a little later than normal because both phones were dead, so we didn't have an alarm. While we were packing up our tent, the pastor of The Little Brown Church came walking around the corner (he saw our bear canister and food around the side of the building). His phone number was on the door of the church and we tried to call him last night to see if it would be ok if we set up our tent, but we didn't get a response. Luckily he was totally fine with us putting up our tent and even mentioned that more than once they have had homeless people sleep in the church yard. He wished us luck on our journey and continued on his way. We made some oatmeal for breakfast before getting on the road. To our surprise, it was relatively warm and the sun was shining this morning. There was a bit of a chilly wind, but somehow, that was in our favor for most of the ride this morning! We got thinking about what the couple touring had mentioned yesterday, and although we didn't like getting stuck in Missoula for 12 days, it might have been a good thing because they said there was a lot of snow in the direction we were going about a week ago, so we might have gotten slowed down by that anyway. After only about 12 miles, we stopped at a gas station for a quick break. I ended up buying a big piece of cake with chocolate chips to split with Joey. It was SO yummy! I was also surprised to find out there was free Wi-Fi at the gas station, so I was able to update the blog. When we were able to plug our phone is, we found there was a voicemail from the Warm Shower's host that we had emailed yesterday. We called her back and we found out that they were able to host us! The sunshine that we had earlier had disappeared and now it looked like it was going to rain. As we continued down the road, we rode by 3 horses and they started to trot along in their fence after us. We decided to stop and pet them; their noses were so soft! Shortly after that, we were climbing a small hill and I saw Joe stop and pick something up. There was a camera right on the side of the road, and it was the exact same camera I had except it was red. From the front it looked fine, but when you turned it over it was destroyed. It looked like someone accidentally left it on the top of their car or something. Inside, was the battery, which looked fine. Since it was the same camera as mine, I figured I would take the battery just by the chance that it worked. It wasn't long before we were in Columbia Falls. We stopped at the grocery store and re-stocked our supplies, since this was a pretty big grocery store. We got some grapes, pasta shells and a jar of alfredo sauce for lunch, just for something different. There was a picnic table outside of what looked like a community center where we set up for lunch. It was nice because there were bathrooms right inside which made it easy to wash the dishes. Our lunch break ended up being pretty long since we had to consolidate the food into bags, cook lunch, and Joey ended up talking to family for quite a while. We only had about 11 miles to go to get to Whitefish, our destination for the night. Almost as soon as we left Columbia Falls, it started to rain. These last miles were a little hillier than what we had done that day, but nothing huge. We met a couple ladies that were just out for a bike ride. They were pretty funny because they said "Wow you guys are riding all the way to Alaska, and all we're doing is riding to get a beer," which we all laughed about. Just before we made it into town, it stopped raining. Overall, it was pretty chilly today and only stayed in the 50s; today was the first day in a while that I had to wear my cycling pants. Once we contacted our host to get specific directions to their house, it didn't take long to get there. We got our bikes put in the garage, which was nice because it looked like it was going to rain some more and went in to a nice warm house that had a fireplace going! Our hosts, Rita and Chuck, were making a nice dinner of homemade chicken noodle soup, salad, and homemade cornbread. After we each had an hot shower, we relaxed by the fire. We snacked on some chips and salsa and peanuts, Joe had a little beer and I had some really tasty hot cocoa! Dinner was amazing, and the cornbread was out of this world. We enjoyed a lot of great conversation and shared some of the "tools of the trade" we had learned through our touring experiences. After dinner, we watched the Stanley cup finals and the NBA eastern championship while enjoying a couple of huge pieces of watermelon. I also was able to finally get our signs that I had made in Missoula attached to our bikes. Chuck had some zip ties that worked perfect! We had such a wonderful day, despite it being cold and rainy. For most of the rest of the evening, it poured outside, so we were definitely glad to be inside and get to sleep in a bed. And after charging that camera battery that I found earlier for a little while, I put it into my camera, and to my amazement, it worked! Now I will have 2 batteries to get me through the long stretches of nothing in the Yukon, I can't believe that the battery was the same exact one in my camera, how amazing. We only rode 37.24 miles today, which ended up being ok because our legs were still pretty sore from yesterday, so we had a little break. Unfortunately the "going to the sun highway" in Glacier National Park isn't open yet, so we are pretty bummed that we won't get to see that, but on a lighter note, only about 60 more miles until CANADA!
It rained a little last night, but it was a pretty light rain, so the tent/bikes didn't get drenched. We woke up around 8:30 and got everything packed up. It was nice to have a bathroom and an electric teapot that we could use to heat up water for our oatmeal (it was quicker than using our little stove). Since both of our tire levers broke yesterday, we were in need of some new ones. Mark was nice enough to let us borrow a couple of his until we were able to get new ones. However, we found out that the guy who owned the bike shop in town would be there around 9 (even though they wouldn't be technically open). So, we were able to get ourselves some tire levers! On the way out of Seeley Lake, we saw a couple touring. They were riding from Browning, MT to Billings, MT. I didn't catch their names, but the guy said his wife wasn't feeling too well and might go home once they reached Missoula. The ride for the rest of the morning was beautiful. We passed by some lakes and we were surrounded by trees the whole way. The only not so great part was that there was no shoulder on the road and it had a good amount of traffic. After 28 miles, we stopped in a little town for lunch. They had a little grocery store, so Joe walked over to see what they had. He came back with a 2 liter of Dr. Pepper, just for me, and a package of hot dogs to add to our mac and cheese. We sat outside the little library and cooked our lunch. There was wi-fi there so we were able to look up to see if there were any more Warm Shower's along the way and I was able to get caught up on updating my blogs too. After an hour and a half break, we were back on the road. Luckily the majority of the ride to Swan Lake was slightly downhill (we had been going uphill most of the morning). Along the way, we saw a mother deer and a tiny fawn sitting about 30 feet from the side of the road. The fawn looked like it could have only been a few weeks old (and was really cute!). Not too long after that, we saw another couple touring!!! Their names were Arlene and George. They were just at the start of their tour, riding from Whitefish, MT to New Mexico along the Continental Divide route (silver-spokes.com). They would have left earlier, but snow on Whitefish pass prolonged their departure. The one really nice thing about following an Adventure Cycling Route is that the likely hood of meeting other touring cyclists increases dramatically (it helps that it is summertime now, too). My knees started to feel sore around the 60 mile mark today, and my legs are feeling it a little too (I definitely got out of shape on the 12 day break!) But I have no doubt that they will get better after a few more days of riding. Shortly after riding through Swan Lake, it started to rain. Our plan was to stop in Ferndale where our map indicated that there was a cyclist only campground. Once we were almost to Ferndale, the rain stopped and the sun came out, we even saw a pretty rainbow with the mountains in the background! There wasn't really anything in Ferndale and we couldn't find where the bicycle camp was. We called the phone number listed on our map, but didn't get an answer. We also tried to have Grammy look up to see if she could find where it was but she didn't have any luck. Since we were only ~5miles from Bigfork, we decided to just keep going. The ride there was really quick, again, a good portion was downhill. We ended up stopping at the grocery store and getting a "Super Sub" for dinner. The guy at the deli was nice enough to make a fresh sub for us so we could get exactly what we wanted on it. My half had ham and turkey and Joe's had ham and roast beef. The sub really was "Super"! I almost couldn't finish my half of the sub without a little help. To go along with our sub, we got a package of chocolate/vanilla cream cookies and a fountain drink. What a yummy dinner, we definitely didn't go away hungry too, which was definitely a plus! After we were done eating, a guy who had seen our bikes outside had come over to talk to us (we ate in the little dining room in the grocery store). He also saw the first couple we met today and was interested in how they were doing once he found out that we met them. It is always so nice when people come talk to us and inquire about our travels. One thing that I've noticed since getting further up into Montana is that people aren't as excited/amazed that we are riding to Alaska (since it is closer to them and many of them have been there before), but are excited/amazed that we rode all the way from Buffalo. Earlier on in the trip it was the other way around for the most part. There weren't too many places to camp right in town, so we continued on for a few miles because we were told that there ere some churches in the direction we were going. The first church we cameto was called "the Little Brown Church" and it was just that. There were a couple cars out front and the door was open, but we didn't see anyone around to ask if we could set up our tent. The church was set up for a wedding! There were pew decorations and the bubbles/programs near the door-someone is getting married in this cute little church tomorrow at 2pm. There was a house, that looked like the parsonage, behind the church. We went over there to see if the people that lived there were affiliated with the church. Unfortunately they weren't, but they said it shouldn't be a problem at all if we are just setting up our tent-they were super nice! So, we set up our tent in the nice fluffy grass. While doing so, the guy from the cyclist campground called back because he saw we had called, but we were already set up for the night. In our tent we looked at our maps for a while; Alaska doesn't seem that far away anymore. This trip is going WAY too fast! We rode 78.29 miles today-finally making some headway! We're about 130 miles from Missoula now.
Last night we were woken up around 1pm by the sound of sprinklers off in the distance. We had looked around before making camp and knew there were sprinklers (just like every other piece of public land we've seen), but we were hoping that they wouldn't be going off tonight. They were moving in shifts starting way on the other side of the school property and would be in our area within a half hour or so. So to avoid being drenched, we moved our bikes and carried our tent over to the parking lot right next to the school where we knew the sprinklers couldn't reach us. In the morning, we woke up to the sound of water dripping on our tent. It sounded like rain, but we knew it wasn't because it was only on one wall of the tent and it was a really sunny morning. Turns out, we found the only spot along the whole wall of the school where water was dripping (probably from an air conditioner on the roof). So nonetheless, the tent still got a little wet. We woke up and were both really tired. As Joe puts it, "we didn't get much sleep last night because of the rain that comes from the ground." When we climbed out of the tent, we were upset to find my back tire had gone flat. Even though we had just put a brand new tire on there, it didn't seem to matter. After we got the tent and bikes packed, we headed back across the lawn to the picnic tables to make some oatmeal for breakfast. Upon further inspection, nothing was in the tire, so we were pretty sure it was just something wrong with the tube. To make our morning go from bad to worse, while Joe was trying to put the tire back on, one of his tire levers snapped and shortly after that the other one did too. At that point, we couln't get the tire back on and were so frustrated that this was happening right after we were getting back on the road. Too bad the levers didn't break yesterday when Joe was putting the new tires on both back wheels, then we could have easily picked up some new ones in town before heading out. Now, we were trying to figure out what to do, should one of us ride back into Missoula AGAIN to get some new ones, hitchhike to town, or just call it quits and find our way back on to Missoula and fly home (Joe's idea, not mine!). Ever since we got into CO, we have had problems with the bikes once or twice a week, if not daily. We are to the point where we are worried we won't make it to Alaska with all these mechanical issues. To add to this, Joe's gears are starting to jump around, which wasn't an issue before today. We're a little disappointed with our bikes and Trek in general for advertising these to be great touring bikes. The frames themselves are great, but the components they put on the bikes are definitely not as good as they should be. I feel like these bikes were designed for someone who is just going to do a tour across the US and that's it. Anything more than that and they start to fall apart. After our moment of feeling defeated, we kept trying to get the tire back on the wheel. Normally we could get them back on without the levers, however these new Schualbe tires were a lot tougher and a lot more stiff around the edges too. Eventually, Joey ended up using our eating forks to get the tire on. We decided to chance it and continue on, the last thing we wanted to do was go back to Missoula after being there so long. So after our not so great morning, we got a pretty late start to the day. We were on the road by a little after 10. The ride for most of the day was a gradual incline, the wind wasn't bad and the sun was shinning, so the day wasn't a complete loss. After about 16 miles, we stopped at a gas station to fill up on water and ended up getting some hot chocolate/cappachino to tide us over until lunch time. While we were sipping on our hot chocolate, a really nice guy named Larry talked to us for quite a while. He shared some insight about how the bears were in the area, what the Indian reservations were like and other general information about Glacier National Park and the area. We rode for another 15 miles before stopping for lunch at a rest stop/ gas station in Clearwater Junction. For most of the ride today, we were both feeling really tired and like we had no energy (probably from not getting good sleep). Joey said something pretty funny during the ride that I thought I'd share too: "Well we changed a tire with a fork, guess we will make it to Alaska!" We made some mac and cheese (the first we had had in almost 2 weeks!) and then went over to the gas station to refill on water and get a soft serve ice cream cone (they had great prices and you got a lot of ice cream!). While we were stopped on our break, we called home to have Gram look up to see if there were any Warm Shower's in the area (we hadn't looked already because we thought we were supposed to go a different way, hence going 12 miles out of the way yesterday). To our surprise, there was a host and after calling, we found out they were available to host us! Excited, we rode the rest of the way to Seeley Lake and found their house. After meeting Bearcat, Mark and Margaret we got our tent all set up in the side yard and had hot showers! Margaret made an amazing dinner of spaghetti, salad, and homemade bread with seasoned hamburger toasted on top. For dessert, we had caramel cheesecake ice cream and homemade almond butter cookies with pumpkin spice (they were amazing!). We enjoyed a lot of fun conversation before deciding we better go to bed since we didn't sleep well last night. While we were sitting in our tent, we heard footsteps outside and when we peeked out of the door, there was a dear standing about 30 feet away! Although today started out not so great, it turned out to be a great day. We only rode 48.02 miles today, but at least we're back on the road!
We woke up nice and early today so that we could make more cinnamon rolls and walk to the post office to see if our package with the new wheel and new tires was there. Again it looked like it would be another rainy day in Missoula. When we got to the post office, we were so excited to find out that our package was there waiting for us!! It was funny that our box weighed 16 lbs, that is more than the bike Dan was riding (one of the guys riding cross country supported who saved us when we had our bike issues)! We also saw Sara at the post office because she was expecting packages too, except she rode here bike over. On the walk home, I stopped to buy a notebook that could be used as a cyclists log for Brent. After hearing how he has a Warm Shower's Guest weekly, sometimes daily, we thought he should have a book for people to write a little about their trip, or just general thoughts. A few other Hosts that we stayed with had one of these and it was a lot of fun for us to read about tours that other people had done, as well as I'm sure it is fun for the host to look back on people that have stayed with them. When we got back to the house, Joey got right to work on getting his new wheel put on his bike. The wheel looks awesome and definitely looks stronger than the broken wheel. The Schualbe Marathon Plus tires that we ordered (reccommended by a number of other touring cyclists) were amazing too. They are actually pretty heavy and they feel like there is a good amount of rubber/air to keep things from puncturing the tube. We were both pretty excited about everything! While Joey was fixing the bike up, I put another batch of cinnamon rolls in the oven (we had an extra just in case the wheel didn't come in and we had to wait another day). As we were packing our bikes up, I put a frozen pizza in the oven (Joe seems to really love these this week for some reason!) and then followed that with some corn bread. Once we were packed we finished up the strawberry jello that I made yesterday afternoon. I packed up the cornbread and our leftover salad so we could enjoy that for dinner later and we hit the road... finally!!! The 12 days we spent in Missoula was a lot of fun, and probably a nice rest for our bodies, but I could feel within the first couple miles that I had gotten out of shape quite a bit during the wait. We had a few stops to make before heading out of Missoula for good. The first of which was the post office to mail a box of stuff home. Next, we stopped back at the Adventure Cycling Association Headquarters because Greg had told us to stop back on the way out of town to get a picture for the archive (they take black and white photos of some touring cyclists with their bikes to put in the series). Next time we go to Missoula, we will be able to see ourselves in the "National Bicycle Touring Portrait Collection" at the headquarters! We filled out the model release for the pictures that had a place to right some information about our tour, other tours we had done, and our guess as to how heavy our bikes were etc. After we got our photo taken, Greg said he could weigh our bikes to see how close we were to our estimates. I guessed my bike weighed about 80lbs. When it was weighed, it ended up being just over 100lbs!!! No wonder I go so slow, my bike only weighs almost as much as I do! Joe estimated his would be 95lbs, and it turned out to be 118lbs!! We were both about 20 lbs under what we thought our bikes really weighed. It makes sense now why I sometimes have to have Joe help me move my bike, when I go to "park it." Once we left Adventure Cycling, we headed out of town a bit to REI and Target. After all the rain we have had while in Missoula along with the fact that it will be the rainy season in AK when we get there, we ended up getting a couple more Sea to Summit waterproof bags so that we could put our sleeping bags in them, there is nothing like trying to fall asleep in a damp sleeping bag (luckily we haven't had too much rain on the first part of the trip!). We also stopped at Target to re-stock on a few things as well as get some Mothballs since a Warm Shower's host that lives in CA told us that bears don't like the smell of them (we figured she would probably know what she's talking about since she lives where there are a lot of bears!). We were so excited to get back on the road that we didn't take a second look at our map. We were positive that we had to go West out of Missoula, and were too excited to realize we were going the wrong way. After about 6 miles or so, we realized we were not where we should be... oops. Once we figured out the way we were supposed to go out of town, we decided it would be best to just go back and follow the route on our maps. Also, if we had continued to go the way we were going, we would end up on an Indian Reservation where there are usually a higher amount of drunk drivers. Although we never thought we would ride into Missoula again on this trip, there we were, riding back into the city. Once we were on the right route, we were headed out of town again. The road was much nicer that the one we were on before since it was only a 2 lane road and had a lot less traffic. About 7 miles outside of Missoula we met a couple guys touring! They were originally from New Jersey and were riding from Washington State to Denver, CO. We mentioned to them that they have to go to Fort Collins, since it was such a fun stop for us. These guys were riding road bikes and were set up just like we were on our very first tour, with just rear panniers (except they said they were going to hotels every night, so they didn't have a tent or sleeping bags like we did). It is so exciting that we are starting to see touring cyclists more frequently now that it is summertime! Shortly after seeing these guys, we rode into Bonner where we decided to find a place to camp. It was already getting late (since we didn't leave the house until 3 and we rode 12 miles out of our way) and we knew the next "town" was ~15 miles away and all that was there was a gas station. We checked to see if we could camp at the churches that were there, but we didn't see anyone around, so we continued down the road a little. We found some nice picnic tables by the baseball field and decided to eat our salad and cornbread there. After we were finished with dinner, the little league game was finished and everyone left the park behind the school, so we moved over to set up camp under the pavilion there. We are so happy to be on the road again, even if we only made it 8 miles or so out of Missoula. If we wouldn't have gone the wrong way we would be a lot further down the road than we are. But, I guess we were bound to go the wrong direction at some point on the trip. We rode 30.64 miles today (12 of which was the wrong way and 10 of which was to REI and back). Now we can finally get back to our normal routine.
Last night we slept downstairs in the sun porch just for something different. We woke up pretty early and made some cinnamon rolls for breakfast. After lounging around watching Netflix videos for most of the morning because it was rainy again, we snacked on our leftover chicken and JoJos for lunch. Then we took a walk to pick up the sign I designed for the back of my bike. On the way, we stopped to get Joey's hair cut since it was getting pretty shabby. By the time we got to the sign shop, it was already after 4. One of the guys that was working on the sign messed up on the placement of the holes and already had another sign made when we were walking in the door. To my surprise, the total cost of our aluminum sign ended up being 12 bucks, AND they gave us the "oops" sign for free. So now we had a nice sign for each bike for less than the cost of one would have been if I tried to make a sign half as nice on my own. I was so excited that the sign came out exactly like I hoped! Now all we have to do is figure out how to mount them onto our bikes so everyone will know where we are riding to (we get asked where we are going ALOT!). After our trip to the sign shop, we headed to the grocery store to pick up something for dinner. We ended up getting another frozen pizza and bough one for lunch tomorrow too since they were still on sale, a bag of salad, cornbread mix, and more raspberry sherbet. On the walk home, we saw a cyclist riding a loaded bike pass by. We yelled to her to see if she was touring. She stopped and we found out her name was Sara and she was riding from Virginia to Washington. We asked if she had a place to stay in town (Brent told us to invite any touring cyclists we saw to stay at the house) and she said she was staying with a Warm Showers Host. We asked if she was by any chance staying with Brent, and to our delight she was!! Since we were almost back to the house, we parted ways knowing we would see each other again in about 10 minutes. For the rest of the walk back to the house, we were so excited that there would be another cyclist staying at the house! After about a half hour of her being at the house, it started to pour, so she got there just in time. We enjoyed some conversation before we made our pizza for dinner. Brent was planning to go to a friend's house to watch the live view of Venus crossing in front of the sun (it was too rainy in Missoula to see it in person) and he invited all of us to go too. So, we all hopped on our bikes and headed over to their house, which was only about 10 blocks away (luckily since it was raining). We had such a fun time chit-chatting and enjoying some snacks of chips and salsa and popcorn. I even had some Mimosa in a really cool glass (I think I found a new favorite drink!) and Joe had a beer. Later on, Brent and his friends when down in the basement, which was full of musical instruments, and we got to enjoy listening to them play some music for a while. What a fun day! Hopefully the wheel comes in tomorrow as planned so we can get back on the road tomorrow afternoon! We rode 2.14 miles today.
I figured since we weren't really doing anything too exciting this week, I would just do just one blog. For the most part, we watched a lot of Netflix videos and walked around town. Almost every single day it rained or stormed. On Friday, we took our longest walk (~12 or so miles) to go to REI to get bug jackets and a new Sea to Summit waterproof bag for the electronics. It was a really long walk, that's for sure! The next day we "hiked the "M"" on the hill next to the University of Montana. Other than that, we ate a lot of blueberry pancakes, cereal and milk, or cinnamon rolls for breakfast; and spaghetti, grilled cheese and tomato soup, frozen pizza, steak, potatoes and corn for lunch or dinner. Today during our walk, we got some chicken and JoJos for lunch at the store and ate in the park. We have also eaten a TON of ice cream, probably a half gallon every day and a half or so! This week has been weird because it has gone SO slow. When we are traveling, the days fly by so quickly, but this week was almost like a "return to normalcy."
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