Blessed Beyond Measure

Good weather. Reasonable riding conditions - shoulder less road, but limited traffic.   A long day, but a beautiful day. We started the day in Dillon, MT and biked 76 miles to Ennis, MT.   We had one long difficult mountain climb at the end of the day.   At one point the grade was 8.9%, significantly steeper than anything we have climbed so far.   Between the steep climb, the thinner air, five straight days of biking, and putting the climb at the end of a long day of biking, I am exhausted.   So I’ll make this short and let the pictures do the talking. Scenery at Beginning of Day Scenery at Midday Scenery at end of day.  Note the house. Wouldn't it be great to step out on your porch each morning and have that view? Right before we began our long climb we passed through two restored towns called Nevada City and Virginia City.   These two towns were booming mining towns in the 1860’s.   The history is ve...

Another great day!   We biked 61 miles from Wisdom, MT to Dillon, MT.   We climbed two summits: one called Big Hole Pass at 7,400 feet and one at 6,800 feet.   But we started the day at 6,000 feet, so a much easier day of riding than yesterday.   Which is good – my legs were worn-out after yesterday’s challenging ride. We hit a big milestone today.   We have now biked over 1,000 miles, a quarter of our planned route.   I finally feel like we have accomplished something.   During the first several days of this bike ride I always felt a little foolish when people would ask us about our trip.   “Biking across the U.S.,” I would say proudly.   “Oh, how interesting.   What a great adventure.   How far have you biked so far?” they would ask.   As soon as the answer came out of my mouth I felt a little sheepish.   I had just talked up our great adventure, and then told them we have barely started.   Now I can say we hav...

Today was a day of challenges and accomplishments.   We started in Hamilton, MT and rode 75 miles to Wisdom, MT.   In between we hit a couple milestones.   Milestone one was climbing a 7,200-foot mountain.   That beats our previous highest summit by 1,800 feet.   But it wasn’t without testing our resolve.   The significant climbing started about 40 miles into our ride.   We climbed a 5% to 6% grade over the course of about ten miles.   I had to stop to catch my breath often.   Not just because of the steep continuous grade, but also the thinner air. Milestone two was biking in the rain.   A first on this trip.   As soon as we hit the summit it started to rain and we still had 26 miles to go.   Granted, there was a major descent for the first 10 miles; but traveling down a mountain at 30 plus mph in a hard cold rain just takes a little of the fun out of it.   In fact, the main goal became trying to see the potholes thr...

Bitterroot Valley.   Why does that sound so familiar?   I’m riding my bike through the beautiful Bitterroot Valley, bordered on each side by majestic mountain ranges.   And as each mile passes, I keep thinking to myself,   “Why do I know the Bitterroot Valley?”   But I’ll get to that later. Today was somewhat a day of recovery after yesterday’s challenge.   We started our ride at Lolo pass on the border of Idaho and Montana, and then descended about 32 miles to Lolo, MT.   Yes, we now have two states behind us and have moved into Montana.   Lolo, MT, which is a few miles south of Missoula, is a landmark on our trip in that it represents the northern most point of our journey.   At Lolo we turned our bikes southeast and rode another 35 miles through the Bitterroot Valley.   In total we biked 67.2 miles today and ended the day at Hamilton, MT. The ride from Lolo to Hamilton had the potential to be stressful.   We follow U.S. ...

This post is posted a day late due to lack of Internet and cell phone service. I ordered the maps we are using for this journey several months before the trip.   When I received the maps I did a quick perusal and something caught my eye.   A 70-mile ascent!   Not steep (until the bitter end), but just a constant uphill journey for 70-plus miles.   It has been the one-stand out item in the maps that has stuck with me.   I assumed we would break it into two days.   But a couple things made that assumption wrong.   One, there are no services, no places to stop for water or food, no cell phone service, nothing.   So a good place to get past.   And second, we had a lot of pent up energy from two days of no activity. So today we traveled from Lowell, ID to Lolo Pass, which is on the Idaho/Montana border.   The total trip was 77.4 miles, and we ascended almost 4,000 feet. We had originally planned to stop about 12 miles before the summ...

We had another day of temps in the 30’s with non-stop rain.   So another day of no biking.   The good news – tomorrow’s weather forecast looks positive – mid 40’s by mid morning, cloudy but no precipitation in sight. It has rained non-stop today, and we have kept ourselves inside pretty much the entire time.  Need-less-to-say, We are bursting with anticipation to get back on the road tomorrow. It is probably good we have some pent up energy as tomorrow morning we begin a 70-mile ascent, the longest continuous ascent of the entire trip.   We are thinking (hoping) it will not be that difficult as the increase in elevation is only 4,000 feet spread out over 70 miles, although the last 1,500 feet of elevation rise is in the last mile.   69 miles of taunting with a one-mile challenge at the end.   You got to love Mother Nature!   We haven’t experienced anything close to 70 straight miles with no ability to let up or coast.   I am looking forwa...

“It wouldn’t be a journey if there were not ups and downs, mountains and valleys, starts and stops.    Sun and rain……and hail…….and snow.” We knew last night that today would potentially bring us poor weather and another day of no biking.  But that doesn’t soften the disappointment.  We woke up to temps in the high 30’s with constant rain and sleet.  We have rain gear to bike in, but heavy rain in low temps is not worth it.  Not only is it uncomfortable, it is unsafe.  Over the course of the day we have experienced hard rain, hail, and snow.  More of the same is expected tomorrow. After only two days of riding in the past five days I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed.  There are things to do: catch up on laundry and other tasks, let the body recover after our single most challenging day so far, read a good book, listen to good music.  But the reality is, that isn’t why I took on this journey.  Sure, I knew weat...