Skip to main content


Day 8

 

East Glacier to Shelby, MT

 

85 miles / 2,800 feet of elevation

 

Montana is the “new Texas” from RAA I, we are in Montana for 5-6 days out of 18.  Growing up in Alaska, my “lower 48” geography is a bit off, I truly had no idea Montana was this large of a state!  However, happy to be in Montana; the roads and shoulders are good, the drivers courteous and share the road willingly.  We have had some trouble with hotel accommodations as the state is not well populated and some towns don’t have hotels for us, so we end up shuttling at the end of the day and beginning of our days.  This shuttling is a very slight inconvenience for the beautiful surroundings we are cycling in.


We enjoyed wide open roads with good cycling all day long.  Montana’s “Big Sky” was a treat throughout the day.


Again, we tried to show you this aspect of Montana in some of our photos but our photos just don’t seem to do the real thing justice – at times we just coast and look around at the cloud formations which just seem so much bigger here!

 

Early in the day we passed by a “Bison Farm.”  Odd to see a herd of Bison / Buffalo standing behind a frail looking wire fence not 30 feet away from us.  (I didn’t stop for photos because it was early morning, I was cold and “Montana Boy Bob” assured me there would be more Bison photo ops.)

 

We also encountered our first, short “bug infestation” with crickets and grasshoppers but this was nothing like the grasshopper deluge we had in the south during RAA I.  (Speaking of RAA I, our thoughts and prayers go to those in Texas and the south as the areas we rode in throughout the south, this same time three years ago, are experiencing yet another large tropical storm (Nicholas) with severe flooding.  We were told when we rode RAA I they had “the wettest September on record in Texas.”)

 

After dinner we revised our next three day schedule to three 100 mile days instead of two 90 milers and a 129 miler afterwards.  We hope that averaging these three will help with our sore, tired legs and butts!


Popular posts from this blog

  Day 13   Wibaux, MT to Dickinson, ND 93.3 miles / three different venues / 4,300 feet of elevation and all at an afternoon temperature of 98° (yesterday’s start was 36° / todays finish was 98°!   Today’s ride was an eclectic trip with three different venues beginning with Steve Miska’s childhood ranch area, then to Theodore Roosevelt National Park (Medora) and to complete, we rode on frontage roads going into Dickinson.   All three venues delivered for one of the best rides in either RAA I or RAA II – a great day! We began riding in Wibaux, MT, where Steve spent his adolescence summers working on his family’s ranch.  From Wibaux we rode across the Montana / North Dakota boarder to Beach, ND where Steve was born. Steve dropped us off, put a new “state sticker” on the van’s back window and then went to see his family’s ranch / farmland.  (Some of the area we rode through early today is part of General Custer’s Trial before Little Big Horn.)...
Read more
  Day 6                Libby, MT to Whitefish, MT   50 miles / 3,700 feet of elevation / shortened day due to mechanicals and necessary bike shop stop   Today’s shortened route took us up and over a beautiful mountain course bounded by a lake to our left (for the entire day!) and a mountain wall to our right.   We traversed over gently rolling and sometimes fairly steep hills with long rollouts afterwards.   We had fantastic road conditions and very few, perhaps 12, cars / trucks passed us during this entire day’s ride.   Near perfect day in the saddle with beautiful scenery all around us. From time to time the tranquility of today’s ride, in sharp contrast to yesterday’s “white knuckler,” was integrated by one of us pointing off the road to deer and wild turkeys.  Some of both allowed us to get quite close before they bounded or flocked away from us.    Later in the day we visited a local...
Read more