DAY 27

DAY 26

DAYS 24 & 25

Day 24 was more about the destination than the journey. Glacier national park is one of those things you really need to see to believe. But I put up a bunch of pictures anyway. 

We arrived in our first real campsite since we were on the coast. We still had lots of daylight so we hiked up to one of the park's big attractions, avalanche lake. 

Because we had a big day the next day, we were in bed by 8. 

The next morning we were on the road a little after 6.  This is because we were going to ride a very particular road, Going-to-the-Sun road. This is the real meat and potatoes of Glacier NP.

Its carved into the mountains and curves upwards with beautiful views along the way. 

Because of crazy traffic and skinny road, cyclists are not allowed between the hours of 11-4. 

So we missed most of the car traffic. Oh darn. 

Ooooo the views. 

We made it to the top of logans pass in world record time. 

The descent was reeeaaally cold so we had to hang out in the sun for a little butt. 

The only notable thing that happened between that and the end of the day was the tasty lunch we got. We ate burgers in a town called Hungry Horse and Mike treated us to huckleberry (the regional specialty) pie. 

We camped in flathead state park. 

DAYS 22 & 23

This is the site we woke up in. The ground was lumpy. 

We continued into Idaho. 

But we got tired of it so we decided to go into another state. 

I reaaalllly wish I had taken more pictures because we rode along a beautiful river with mountains caressing it.  But the cars and small shoulder precented me from that. They aren't used to bikes up here. 

We set up camp to the left of where this picture was taken in the Lolo national Forest. 

 

I forgot to mention we actually changed time zones at some point. 

The next day we left bright and early and rode into Plains Montana. We then had a 47 mile stretch of desolate highway between us and Flathead lake. 

We covered almost 60 miles before noon. Once we hit Flathead we took a long swim. 

We also went to a dairy queen that I went to 10 years ago. But that's not important.

Ooooh look at those mountains in the background. 

We stayed the night in Kalispell, at striking distance to Glacier National Park. 

DAY 21

We woke up in our strange corner of the forest and left to find a more suitable place to make breakfast. We couldn't have found a better breakfast spot. 

Our descent out of the Colville national forest dropped us into a cold fog bank following the pend orielle river. 

Highway 20 follows this river south into the border town of Newport WA.  We saw some pretty sights and even went to bible camp along the way. And in the early afternoon, we finally made it into the promised land. 

After spending over a week in Washington, I was ready to go into an other state. But scenic Idaho surpassed all my expectations. 

It was beauuutiful. In particular I was really into a place called Standpoint. We went right over to the beach to take a little dip. The beach was packed with people. I won't rant too much about Standpoint, but if you ask Mike he'll let you know how much I liked it. 

We were told we could just set up camp anywhere off the highway.  So we rode into the sunset. 

Peeeerfect weather and scenery. 

We ran out of light sooner than we expected and set up camp a bit off the highway in a place that we deemed the worst campsite yet. 

DAY 20

Finally we received our reward for all that climbing. We woke up, got on our bikes and didn't pedal for 6 miles. 

This descent brought us down into the town of Kettle Falls. From here we rode through colville and up towards some more forestry terrain. 

In colville national Forest there is a beautiful group of "chain lakes". So we picked the first one we saw and rode down to it. 

And we went swimming. 

Then we finally got to do some riding off the pavement. 

Our skinny tires weren't happy about some parts but it was fun. 

Out of NOWHERE a big ol storm cloud floated over us. We quickly pulled off the highway an into the woods where we hastily set up camp. It rained and even hailed a bit and there was thunder and lightning but we survived the night. 

DAY 19

Because of the big climbs of the two previous days, we planned a short day over the Wauconda Pass. But because we like to overwork ourselves, we climbed the next pass as well. 

The Wauconda pass took us through some high desert and was nice to look at sometimes. 

The Sherman pass took us through colville national forest. 

It was real nice. Here is mike at the summit. We were happy as clams to make it up there. 

But it was another big climb. 

Once we hit the top we went to the campground/viewpoint. The campground was closed down for one reason or another. We simply walked our bikes under the closed entrance gate and set up camp in one of the abandoned campsites. It was a little creepy like some kind of ghostcamp. But it was a great place to sleep. It rained on us a little in the morning and we got a little lightning too. this is what it looked like in the morning.