Making Our Way Through Montana
It’s been a while since our last blog. We have been on the move with Jay riding 45 – 75 miles a day. We have had our share of rain and a few technical and equipment problems. A map with a summary of our travels is posted at the end of this blog.
 |
| Campsite at Devil Creek C. G. |
Thursday, June 21 was a non-ride day since we needed take care of an equipment problem. It’s evident that Jay is a curse to air mattresses. Last night his third air mattress deflated, leaving him sleeping on the hard, cold ground.
 |
| Camp Hosts Sandi and Ray |
While we ate breakfast at a small roadside café with our Devil Creek USFS campground (Essex, MT) host Sandi and her husband Ray, she told us the only place to buy an air mattress was in Kalispell. Kalispell is a big town where we earlier found the only Toyota dealer for miles around that could perform scheduled maintenance on our Prius. We agreed with Sandi’s assessment and after breakfast we drove the 60 miles back to Kalispell.
 |
| Beautiful vistas abound in and around Glacier National Park |
One of the major goals of our journey was to experience the beauty of this great county and learn people’s stories. Sandi and Ray are among the national treasures of this land we had hoped to meet. Sandi grew up on an Idaho ranch with no indoor plumbing. She broke horses, milked cows, mended fences and generally lived the life of a rancher. She said that she was forever grateful for her wonderful ranch-centric life. Ray worked 27 years in health care administration, retired, then spent 12 years driving trucks loaded with gold ore. That’s how he met Sandi, who was also a truck driver at the time. They’ve been married 13 years and love the life they lead: Montana in the summer and Arizona in the winter.
 |
| The road block had this sign posted. |
Jay’s 65 mile ride to Cut Bank, MT today put the mountains behind us, including crossing the
Continental Divide at the Marias Pass, the southern bypass in Glacier National Park. After climbing the steep Cascade Mountains in Washington, Jay opted to ride the bypass route rather the 48-mile road aptly named The Road to the Sun to the Continental Divide. During our visit to Glacier N. P. we learned that the Road to the Sun was still closed due to snow. Yikes! It’s late June and snow is still blocking mountain roads. After 30 years in the South “snow issues” in June just does not compute with us.
We are learning so much on our travels and establishing a new and deeper bond with this great nation of ours.
Sorry to hear the Going to the Sun Highway was closed. It was a highlight of the trip Phil and I took in late June 2006. We had to stop on the way down and cool our brake-heated rims in the roadside stream. Glad to hear it was snow and not Park Service budget cuts!
ReplyDelete