Back in the USA (and, Finally, to Civilization)

If you have been following this blog, my apologies for not having updated in several days. I have spend the time well, wandering the wilderness in remote areas of Canada. Very limited cell service and no reliable Internet access.


I have posted the missed days, and will post pictures soon.

The ride today was a ride to make up a little bit of time. So far, we are about 125 miles behind schedule and we need to make some of that up so we are not stuck with a real hard day (for Jeff) of riding. It didn't start off too well, as the GPS instructed us to go to the beginning of the planned route. I didn't realize the gaffe until we were about 20 miles out of our way. We also had to back track another time becuase we were not sure about which port of entry we were to take to cross the border. Jeff was leading, and he had two choices. He chose the wrong one.

To make up the distance, it helped that Alberta 93 out of Banff, US-93 and US-40 toward Glacier National Park are all major roads with speed limits of up to 70MPH. The start of the ride offered steep ascents, and then wound down to the town of Radium at an 8% grade (wow!) before leveling off somewhat. I think that the route here is still in the Rockies, but offered only rolling hills and some nice curves at about 3200 feet above sea level. We were able to see some mountains, but they were off in the distance. After about 1/2 hour waiting to get across the border, it was smooth sailing to get to the entrance to Glacier National Park, with one exception. Coming into the town of Whitefish, I could see in storm clouds the distance. I changed the radio to the weather band and heard that a thunderstorm was passing through that had hail the size of pennies. On the north side of town, I saw there was a rest area and, if it had cover, we were making a stop. Jeff was already with me, as he was beeping his horn and waving behind me. Another biker was already there, as were the pea-sized hail he had been riding through. I guess the delays earlier in the day did serve a purpose after all. Otherwise, we may have been riding in the middle of the storm!

We stopped at the KOA about 5 miles from the west entrance to the park, only to find that they were full. I asked about availabe spots inside the park. Nope, they were full, too. It really wasn't a surprise to me, since there was an awful lot of traffic on the road (something we will have to get used to after the past week). They knew of another campground with tent sites available, and we traveled another mile towards the park to get the last site they had. As a special treat, they were roasting barbeque at the time we pulled in, so we did not have to go far. Too bad that the nearest adult beverage was about 14 miles back they way we came.

We were successful in making up over half of what was needed, and now stand 50 miles shy of our goal. It may become problematic, since those 50 miles are suppose to cover the "Road to the Sun" road over Logan's Pass through the park. I suspect that it will be heavily traveled so we are going to try and get an early start and put off breakfast until that part of the trip is complete. If all goes as planned, we will try to stop in at the festival in Missoula Pat and Butch from Oregon told us about before we end in Butte for the night.