Craig Rosene was from Tampa, had started his journey in Banff on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, and was taking his leave from West Glacier in three more days to go see family in Minnesota. He’d been beaten up by the route as well, but had been having fun goofing around Glacier for the previous couple of days. We chatted a bit as I set up camp, then we walked down the road to get some dinner in the ‘village’ by the lake. It was fun to hear Craig’s stories…but I was tired and somewhat quick to bed after a long day of ups and downs.
In the morning it was obvious that my legs were quite confused about the previous day’s hike. There was stiffness and soreness is some new places, and my heels were raising all sorts of hell about the fact that they had been ‘suffocated’ in sneakers for four whole hours! Sissies. I caught Craig sneaking out of camp to catch a bus up to the pass, then ride back down. We had some quick goodbyes and I was off on an impromptu/unguided tour of the trails around the campground. After a half hour I stumbled into the village area, led by my nose seeking out some coffee. I found a coffee stand and got in line…then had two separate people cut in front of me to order?!?! I looked around to see if I had a sign on my back that said “skip me”…or to see if I was secretly being taped by some reality show, hoping to start a fight with a random guy by delaying his caffeine fix. I turned around to find that Larry, the teacher from Nebraska that I’d met two days before, was standing right behind me…how random! I caught up with him, got some good stories about the family rafting trip the day before, then actually got to meet his family.
So with about 20 ounces of java warming my hands, I wandered back to camp to pack up. On the way I bumped into Craig rolling the opposite direction, and heard that none of the morning buses had bike racks on them…so he was getting some breakfast and trying again tomorrow. We had another round of goodbyes before I scurried off to get moving again. After seeing a sign for the town of West Glacier on one of the paths, I opted to take it over the road. It was twisty and curvy and super fun for a morning cruise. It galloped through some heavily treed woods, and I jumped more than once thinking that I’d seen something big and furry moving out of the corner of my eye. Suddenly I was in a neighborhood of employee housing…then cruising across the bridge into town. Mid-way over the bridge in mid-pedal, I glanced at the river below and damn near fell over the railing. Laying in wait for a new hatch of bugs were no less than 50 trout in one big “screw you guys, you’ll never catch us because we’re not even feeding” school. They just sat there, casting light shadows over a gravel bed, hovering like loaded gun barrels. I didn’t even realize that I was talking out loud to them…hurling compliments and insults…until someone road their bike right up beside me. It was Craig again! He was off to do laundry in town, and was wondering if I was ever going to make it out of there. I gave him one last goodbye and peeled off to the post office. I was shocked and thrilled to find that the care package from wifey had made it in that morning! I wasn’t about to share the moment with anyone, so I cinched the box down to the trailer with some bungees and beat a hot streak out of town.
I made my way west and entered the land of the chain saw wood carvers. Every 1/4 mile was another stand offering very similar looking bears and eagles and “welcome to our home” signs with ‘bear’ themed puns. Mile after mile after mile and I finally concluded that in using such a large and unforgiving tool like a chain saw, the pieces of work tend to take on very familiar and repetitive themes. And just when I thought each structure was copying the previous, I rolled up on a bearpark. Yup, pay your money and drive into an area with a very high fence surrounding it…then gawk at the bears that roam freely around inside the complex. I couldn’t resist rolling up to the gate and asking if they had a discount for cyclists. The woman in the booth stared straight through me as she tried to craft an appropriate response. Then, in true Montanan fashion, she finally smiled and said that if I signed a waiver she’d let me in for free…then she grinned like an undertaker and said she’d film the whole thing from the safety of her booth.
Bested by a sense of humor even more morose than my own, I pushed on. In Coram I pulled over by a coffee stand and overtook their picnic table to dissect the care package sent from home. So nice to have some top quality snacks…esp with sweet little notes stashed in them! The taste of home fueled me on through Martin City, Hungry Horse, and beyond Montana’s version of the House of Mystery…clearly some sort of later-day kin to the famous H.O.M. on the northern California coast that I’ve visited on a handful of occasions. Spoiler Alert: it’s built on a hill! Around this time I finally began trading msgs with Dulcy.
It’s a matter of practice that while on these trips I never really know when I’m actually going to make it to any specific place. Months before I left on this trip, at the home of my wife’s very good friend in Bellingham, I mentioned that I was thinking about heading out on my bike into the Glacier area. My wife’s friend…also named Erin…was quick to point out that her sister (Keegan) was living somewhere in the West Glacier area, and could probably host me for a night. Well it turns out that when I was finally passing through the area, Keegan was out in the back country of the Bob Marshall Wilderness (where she’s some sort of volunteer coordinator for projects…and where her husband is a backcountry ranger). Turns out that Keegan’s mother-in-law (Dulcy) lives with her husband Dick in the Whitefish area…and, according to non-wife Erin, they were two of the nicest people ever to grace the Montana Rockies. So, armed with the phone number of my wife’s good friend’s sister’s mother-in-law (still following me?), I was placing calls to someone I had never met and didn’t have the faintest relation to…in search of a shower and a place to set up camp for the night.
Dulcy and I traded msgs as I rolled through a section of road next to the Flathead River that offered up a negative shoulder (where the pavement evaporates beyond the left side of the white line) with a guard rail and some nasty drivers. But after a short stint of craptastic riding, I was pushing through Columbia Falls with confirmation from Dulcy’s msgs that I did in fact have a place to clean up and stay for the night. My renewed attitude helped scoot me straight into town, through a coffee shop for some fuel, and into the library for some postings. I emerged two hours later…somewhat blind from staring at the screen without blinking for too long…and crossed the street straight into the heart of the weekly Tuesday fair?!?!?! Live music, organic fruit and veggie stands, home-made food booths, kids running everywhere, hundreds of beamingly happy people, and Mennonite Iced Cream. This last item would require pages of words to explain…just rest assured that some video may exist. And while their dress may not cry out “I make awesome freekin’ ice cream!”…those folks sure-as-hell knew how to convert a John Deere tractor engine into one damn-fine iced cream making machine.
I met a number of wonderful folks at the market/fair…ate plenty of wonderful food…and heard some decent music…but I finally had to roll on to the outskirts of town to cath up with the long-lost friends whom I’d never met.
