June 30, 2024
Threading the Needle.. Almost
Bigfork to Whitefish; delays at start, getting lost, Mother Nature gets even
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I am happy to be sitting warm and dry in the Whitefish train depot as I write this. This day began and ended with rain although it was much more impactful at one end.
This morning in Bigfork it was raining steadily at 0600, when I first woke up. I went back to bed, tossed and turned for an hour and finally got up at 0700 and Jim woke up shortly after. We examined the weather reports and all of them agreed that the rain would stop between 10 and 11 and it would be dry until roughly 4 to 5 pm. So we decided to stall and leave late, then ride our 40 miles to Whitefish without too many stops and arrive before the expected resumption of wet weather.
We left the motel at 10:30 and rode to Pocketstone for a late breakfast. Except…we had to wait 35 minutes to be seated. With the usual “relaxed” speed of service, we did not leave the restaurant until after noon, but by then, the rain had stopped.
We changed the route to leave town through Eagle Bend which added a mile but allowed us to bypass the most narrow portion of Hwy 35 as it approaches Bigfork. We made a quick stop in Eagle Bend to take off rain gear and were waylaid by several nice ladies out for a morning hike, who were curious about our travels. Not a big deal but we talked with them for several minutes.
From there we got back on Hwy 35 and then changed the route again to skip the gravel Jacquette Rd. that we rode in on. Instead we took Riverside Rd. which is paved. We crossed Hwy 35 several times in the process and all of the changes confused our Wahoos so neither of them alerted us to a turn as we rode by. We almost rode into Kalispell before we noticed the error. We then stopped and consulted Google maps to see what happened, and had to backtrack several miles to get back on course. All taking up precious time.
We could see the weather on the horizon as we approached Columbia Falls-dark, foreboding clouds hanging over the hills behind Whitefish and obvious heavy rain patches below them. If we hadn’t been on bicycles riding straight at them, we would have been marveling at their beauty and ferocity.
So, we actually got to about 5 miles outside of Whitefish before the deluge began. As soon as I felt drops, I yelled at Jim to stop, and then the heavens just opened up. We pulled out rain jackets but we were wet even before we could put them on, it was raining that hard. Lightening overhead, thunder, no visibility, really terrible and potentially dangerous riding conditions. But because we were on a back road, there was no place to shelter and, as we had been watching this storm cell for a while, we knew it was moving very slowly. So we just put down our heads and rode toward Whitefish as fast as we dared.
This was the best decision because the rain slowed down as we approached town. Finally we crossed the train tracks just beyond the depot and rounded one more corner and it came into sight. We rode right up the wheelchair ramp to the door and rolled inside, sopping wet, dripping all over the floor.
The few people in the station were quite amazed that we rode through the storm-apparently there were severe thunderstorm warnings issued prior to it. The station agent was extraordinarily helpful-finding us plastic bags for our wet clothing, boxes to put things into to check and tape for the boxes. He even kept the bikes and carry-on’s for us so we could clean up and go into town to eat.
Whether we would have beat the storm had we not been delayed by the breakfast wait, the Eagle Bend ladies, getting lost and having to ride an extra 8 miles, is up for debate. Since we were trying to squeeze the ride into a narrow weather window, we could have ridden straight down the highways, but that would have been unpleasant as well. So we’ll put this one in the books as one of those crazy experiences you get while cycle touring. What a way to finish our Montana adventure!
The train is running late-no surprise-that is par for the course with Amtrak. If we were in a hurry we would fly.
We do have one more day to ride on July 3-from the Martinez train depot back to Napa so my next entry and conclusion of this journal will be shortly after that.
Today's ride: 48 miles (77 km)
Total: 572 miles (921 km)
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