Whitefish- Eureka, MT

July 25, 2020

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1,663 elevation gain

The good weather and low temperatures have allowed me to relax my departure standards even more. We went for breakfast this morning at the Buffalo Cafe. That is two mornings in a row that I've eaten a good breakfast before riding. Both days I didn't get hungry until the very end of the ride. Usually I'm up far too early for my stomach to be interested in much food. The downside to the late departure is spending more time in a headwind. It wasn't terrible, but the headwind was noticeable from the start and continued all day.

Today is Saturday. We know that the road out of town is narrow and not bicycle friendly. My hope is that traffic will be low because it's the weekend. Jacinto thought people would be going to play on the nearby lakes. I was correct on this one, at least at 8:30 AM. There wasn't much traffic and I got past the first three miles/300 feet of climbing just fine. I used my granny gear for the first time in days. There was a bike path for a couple of miles. It was fairly busy with people walking and the road shoulder was good at that point, so I stayed where I was.

Today didn't have a lot of total climbing or total elevation gain, but look at all of those little climbs! Ugh. I dropped down as far as 2,600 feet elevation today. The high temperature was 81 degrees - which I think is excellent for riding, especially at the end of July.

The road was gradually climbing until mile 20, and then gradually downhill for the rest of the day. I didn't seem to be making good progress. Whenever I looked at the computer, my current speed was 7-8 mph. Between the climbing and the headwind, I was sure slow! At mile 16 I stopped by a guard rail. I was just taking a last look around before dropping my shorts when I saw a bicycle coming down the road! It turned out to be a tandem followed by a Bike Friday. I certainly would have talked, but they went right on by. I tried to decide where they had started. It was 10 AM, I hadn't been on the road too long, but if I'd been riding with Oren and gotten out early, certainly it would be feasible to have started in Eureka and be that far. Especially with their tailwind. I'm glad someone got the advantage of the wind.

That was the only pit stop I made the entire day. I concentrated on getting to the top of the climb, then my day went faster. I didn't get a lot of advantage out of the downhill, but it sure beat climbing into a headwind!

Almost the entire day was riding through a forest of trees. That's not a bad way to spend the day. The road had a modest shoulder the entire day and traffic was light. I did notice a number of trucks pulling horse trailers. I wondered if there is a sale somewhere. It turns out that there's a rodeo in Eureka tonight. That news surprised me, with COVID and Montana's mask rules. I wonder if the bull riders will be wearing masks?

My riding day today was short, 49 miles. The uhaul store was before town. I pulled in and parked by the trucks. I pulled out my phone, preparing to follow the online instructions for unattended check out. I knew that I had to call and get the time changed on my pick up. I had guess 3 PM and it was 1:30 PM. I was on hold for awhile, but Melissa reset my time for me. I should have been good to go, but the app said my pick up didn't qualify for unattended. I called Melissa back . . . it turns out the local store had failed to leave me a key. Melissa said I could take a 26' truck that they had ready. I told her all we were putting inside was two bicycles and I sure didn't want to pay gas for a 26' truck all the way to Colorado. In the end the owner came over and checked the truck out the traditional way. All of that took an hour, the man didn't live too far. We saw Jacinto bicycle past, but he didn't pull in. I had been waving great big, but Jacinto said he looked and didn't see me.

I thought Jacinto would be waiting at the motel by the time I was finished, but I saw him at the grocery store. Interesting that the grocery in town is closed from 10:45-2:30. Grocery stores are usually open all day. I told Jacinto the motel had a pretty good selection of stuff. I continued on. Jacinto didn't show up. It turns out he stopped at the big grocery on the edge of town. He purchased items as if we were touring - four bananas, two soda pops, a V-8 for me, a big container of broccoli salad. We've discussed several times recently about how we will need to ramp down our eating. It's always hard at the end of a trip. Our bodies are used to fueling constantly, but if we kept eating that much and not cycling 5-6 hours a day, we'd be rolling down the street!

We are in room #1, right next to the office. I made sure we had a good room. We've been through here before. The first time we had a remodeled room with good wi-fi close to the office, the next time our room was at the end of the row and the wi-fi didn't work at all. I had written down that we have a king bed, but it's a queen. However, the internet is good.

Jacinto ate some snacks and said he wanted to continue on to the border to be done, done, done. He took all of the panniers off of the bike. Off he went. I had instructions to leave the motel at 3:25 to pick him up. Driving feels odd. It's a good thing there's no traffic going to the border. I had trouble forcing myself to drive over 40 mph. Jacinto called to see where I was. He had taken some border photos and was at the duty free shop eating an ice cream sandwich. He was excited to be finished, with 2,403 miles exactly for the trip. Jacinto said his bicycle seemed a little wiggly without all of the weight on it. He felt like he went faster.

His bicycle is in the uhaul, ready to go. Mine is waiting for 11 more miles in the morning.

Google says we should drive back through Swan Lake and Seeley Lake. We aren't interested in driving the route we just rode. We hope to make it to the SLC area tomorrow and finish the drive home Monday.

Look at the fancy little stopper in the flexible hand lotion pouch. I haven't seen that before.

I managed to have just enough Spiz meal replacement for today. Perfect portioning!

An uninviting smoker's area next to the grease bin and the trash cans. I wonder if any employees have cut down on smoking as a result?

In Whitefish I see only white people, it says. That caught my funny bone.

They rode right on by. I sure would have talked. I was already stopped.

The view opened up enough to see some mountains. Most of the day was spent in a tunnel of tall pine trees. It's not a bad way to spend the day.

An osprey nest. I can see one adult and one juvenile. The other adult was across the road on top of a telephone pole.

Clouds are fun to look at as long as they are not threatening to rain.

I'm there. The truck is there. But they forgot to set it up for remote pickup. Luckily the owner lives nearby and came over and checked it out to me.

Jacinto at the border! 2,403 miles later and two months to the day when we left Rifle.

Jacinto's photo of Bass Lake, just before Eureka.

Today's ride: 49 miles (79 km)
Total: 2,298 miles (3,698 km)

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George (Buddy) HallKelly - you noted "We know that the road out of town is narrow and not bicycle friendly. My hope is that traffic will be low because it's the weekend." Just FYI, the ACA routing for the Northern Tier between Whitefish and Eureka has 2 diversions off of Highway 93, and they are much more pleasant riding. It does add about 9 miles to the overall trip segment though.

The ACA route is what my map shows; https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/warriordeath1/day-70-whitefish-state-park-to-eureka-mt/

I have a video in that day's entry that shows some of the off-highway riding. Just a tidbit in case you pass this way again.
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1 year ago

Kelly IniguezThis trip is still our collective all time favorite. Yesterday, out of boredom, I started routing a different border to border. I got into Wyoming before I got cross eyed. It's not as good (scenic, direct) of a route as this Chevy route. I was trying to find new roads, while still heading north. I purposefully included a couple of dirt roads in Colorado, to try and include some new roads.

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/41892253

That's all a long way to say that we might be passing that way again!
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1 year ago

Kelly IniguezTo George (Buddy) HallI see you've gone to the trouble of recreating the route on RWGPS - that took some work! Even the best route can be improved. Two places I can think of right away is going into Rifle (home). We came home to sleep in our own bed. The ride between Grand Junction and Rifle along the interstate isn't that exciting. Our first choice was to take Highway 65 over Grand Mesa, but we wanted an extra day in our own bed. If you are feeling up to a 5,000 foot gradual climb that will be memorable for all of the good reasons - this is your climb. OR, an alternate route would be to take a left and Grand Junction and ride over Douglas Pass to Rangely. It's a challenging day on a good day, and a horrible day if you hit the wind wrong. Does that sound like a good recommendation? The appeal to Douglas Pass is riding through desolate Utah type shrubbery, then popping up into the alpine, and back down into sagebrush. The top is a wonderful surprise, with a creek, beaver dam, etc. There's also petroglyphs right by the side of the road all along the way.

The second place, right off hand, that I would make a change is between Roosevelt, Utah and Altamont. It was a short stretch of misery. We thought we were on a nice country back road, but instead it was a busy, narrow trucking road to a gravel pit (?). 87, slightly to the south, might be a better choice.

feel free to email me about any route discussion you'd like to take off list. kelly.iniguez@gmail dot com

I think this route is a real winner, even more so with the experience of more wheels traveling it.
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1 year ago

Kelly IniguezTo George (Buddy) Hallhttps://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/nwcolorado/day-4-fruita-to-rangely-douglas-pass/

Here is a link to Wayne Estes' day climbing Douglas Pass.
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1 year ago

George (Buddy) HallTo Kelly IniguezKelly - thanks for your email, as I get farther along I may seek your help. Right now I'm just planning a "possible" tour. A few notes of interest; 1.) you can click on the title of a RWGPS map made by someone else in Cycleblaze and it opens in RWGPS, then you can save a copy of it to your own routes list - so I saved a copy of your map and have just edited it a bit, I didn't have to start from scratch, 2.) I wanted to ride this route in May and June, but due to other things going on I don't have time to be prepared by then so I'm planning a mid-August start that would finish in early to mid-October, 3.) because of that late start, I would ride it from north to south, 4.) the main changes I want to make to your route include not riding the portion from Ennis to Missoula (it's a great route, but it's part of the Transam and I have ridden it previously), not diverting over towards Salt Lake City (just trying to miss the big city population), and not diverting into Colorado as much. I haven't put any real thought into the route yet, so far just drawing lines on a map. I read the link to Wayne's journal, that looks like a very good (but challenging) route. If I go north to south I may need to pay attention to wind more.
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1 year ago

Kelly IniguezI do know about copying a route - I just wasn't clever enough to change the name! I do see you gave me credit, thank you.

This year, we did hit the populated parts of Utah (Payson/Provo/Heber), but on the border to border trip, I wouldn't say it was populated. The piece approaching Afton, WY was spectacular. Jacinto's opinion on the Altamont, UT day is that we were tired from battling the wind (true) and the trucks were just the icing on the cake for a tough day. Scenery all along there clear up to WY is desirable.

Your proposed timing could be a real plus, traffic wise. You might even want to dip into Yellowstone, with that time frame.

I hope it works out for you. I'd love to see your take on the route.
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1 year ago

Kelly IniguezTo George (Buddy) HallI see your new, tighter mileage route now. Yes - you definitely avoid the populated area of Utah!

I have never bicycled Flaming Gorge. It's grown to be intimidating to me, as I've heard several horror stories about how difficult it is. I know you like a challenge, you might love it! There's a good account (with motels) on that other place -2 Brothers, Utah Mountains 2017. They have good journals for research, lots of details.

I get all wound up on routing details. I'll let you alone to do your own research now. Let me know if you'd like clarification on anything.
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1 year ago