Saint Mary to Shelby, MT (90 miles!)

6-30-2010

What a day!  It started off difficult but ended as one of the most fun days of riding I've ever had.


Morning broke bright and early.  Everyone was quick to pack up and get out of camp.  I was running  a little slower than the group, so I was one of the last people out of the camp, but it was still before 7am.

A wonderful last view of the mountains as we left the park.

The day started off with a nasty hill.  It was fairly steep and long (5 miles and 1500 vertical feet), especially since it was right off the bat and my knees hadn't been able to loosen up yet.  As I climbed, I was struck by the beauty of Glacier, the mountains are just incredibly rough.  Later I found out the some other riders had seen 2 moose and a bear as they climbed, but I wasn't so lucky.

Actually I encountered this bear on the way down from Logan pass the day before, but it fits better here.  As I road around a corner I noticed 2 cars stopped looking at it, so I pulled up.  It was a little scary being only 25 feet away from a bear without a car between us.

After reaching the top we sailed down the other side only to find another steep hill awaiting us.  Finally after surmounting that frustrating obstacle a few more times, we sailed into a valley where we found a road that led to Browning.

Not Browning, but pretty much from that point on, this is the most exciting that our scenery gets.

This is when the true fun started.  As we road, we discovered that we were going incredibly easily at 20+ mph.  Later we realized that we were both going with a tailwind and going slightly downhill.  After cruising into Browning for some quick food, we got onto Highway 2, which we'll stay on until Minnesota.

Luckily, we were able to retain the wonderful tailwind until Chester, all together we covered 50 miles in only 2 and 1/2 hours!  Because we were in Chester so early, we decided to push on to Shelby, another 25 miles.  These miles went much more slowly, as we lost the tailwind, but still much quicker and easier than we've been used to in the mountains.

The Shelby campground was very nice.  It was in a city park, but was quite wonderful.  We had electrical hookups and a nice shower house.  Three cheers for unlimited shower times!