To Infinity and Beyond

We arrived in Glacier NP on Wednesday, June 24, sans bike and with the wonderful assistance of Joyce and Tim Murphy in who's garage the bike remained as we waited to get the rear wheel replaced. We had hoped to find lodging at The Lodge at MacDonald Lake, but it was full and so we were able to get in at the Village Inn at Apgar, the other end of MacDonald Lake. We're glad we did, because the views from our room, which looked directly out on the lake, were incredible, and changed by the minute as clouds or sun moved across the sky. When we checked in mid-afternoon and entered our room for the first time, we saw a gift basket with assorted goodies to eat and a bottle of Huck wine, made from grapes but with huckleberry flavoring. We thought: "Oh, that's nice, the Inn provides a gift basket when you arrive." Joyce, said: "No, they don't. That must be from some friends of yours." Sure enough, there was a card from our good friends Mike and Carlene Pardina, and gift certificates for two shirts at the gift shop. Thanks again, M&C, you guys are too much. (They are also on a great adventure right now with Marty and Kathy Reis, taking a month to drive to Alaska. They are working their way through Canada right now.) When we went to the gift shop to cash in on the shirts, all the shop personnel had to come out and meet us: "Oh, you're the gift basket couple!" Apparently, gift baskets are a very rare event in Apgar.



We spent most of the first day and evening just enjoying the view, the goodies and relaxing, realizing that we had finally made it to our next big milestone destination. The next morning, after enjoying the early morning view, we cooked up the huckleberry flapjacks from the gift basket and Joyce picked us up around 10 to go back to Whitefish to get the wheel and bike. Another blessing from meeting up with the Murphys and their friend Walt was we learned of the back way for getting to the park, which would keep us off any major highways. What a delight! Fantastic scenery along nice quiet roads for the 30 or so miles and bringing us onto US 2 with less than a mile to West Glacier and the park entrance. With a good part of the day consumed with getting the bike, we once again relaxed for the remainder of the afternoon and enjoyed huckleberry cobbler ala mode.



Perhaps the major disappointment of our stay at Glacier was that the park shuttle system has not started to operate yet (July 1 startup), so we were limited in our mobility in the park to just the MacDonald Lake area; there is quite a bit more to see, we will have to do that the next time. After breakfast on Friday, we rode up the lake to The Lodge, hiked up the Gunsite Trail for a ways, came back down for lunch at Jammer Joe's, and took the early afternoon boat tour of the lake on the DeSmet, a wooden boat that has been operating on the lake for more than 50 years. They have an unbroken record of always returning to the dock, and this trip was no exception. We had the pleasure of a park naturalist being on board, who gave us a narrative about the formation of the mountains and glaciers, the history of the forests, and the various animals that call that area their natural home. He explained how the Park Service was responding to the forest fire that devastated the NW side of the lake several years ago (leaving all the timber standing as it is and allowing the natural processes to take place, rather than harvesting good dead trees, which is the way the Forest Service would handle it). The forest on the SE side of the lake has not seen a fire in 500 or more years, so the contrast was quite astounding.



The boat ride lasted an hour, and then we jumped on one of the Red Bus Tours, the famous 1930's buses that have open tops and can carry 17 passengers at a time. The drivers are called Jammers, since before the buses were renovated prior to 2002, the manual transmissions required double-clutching and "jamming" the gears into position as they went up the mountainsides. Our jammer, Fred, took us up the "Going to the Sun Road" to Logan Pass and gave a wonderful narration about the area, the history of the park, bear management then and now, forestry practices and answered all the questions quite ably. Besides giving us the opportunity to see much more of the park, we also monitored the road and conditions for our ride the next day which would follow the same path. The road was engineered for the vehicles that were available in the 1920's, so the maximum 6% grade also complements bicycling fairly well. While the road is under a state of rehabilitation that is in its 4th year of 10, it is still in pretty good shape. And the views are absolutely stunning. The total elevation gain is about 36oo' over the 24 miles from the Lodge to Logan Pass, with most of it occurring in the final 16 miles. Yet, there is only one switchback, called the Loop at 4300', and then it is about 8 miles and 2300' to the top from there.

We thoroughly enjoyed the Red Bus trip and appreciated getting a close-up of what was to come. When we returned to the Lodge, we had dinner there, then rode back to Apgar to pack up.

We arose at 5am and departed Apgar at 6, hitting the Lodge for breakfast at 6:45 and heading up the road at 7:15 after also picking up box lunches for at the top. The morning was quite cold and we had all our cold weather gear on. Biking notes provided by the Park Service suggested that we allow 45 minutes to get to Avalanche Creek and another 3 hours to get to the top from there. This info was important, because they close the eastbound road to bicycles from 11am - 4pm and I did not want to sit by the side of the road for 5 hours. I had estimated that we would need to be at the Loop no later than 9am. We arrived at Avalanche Creek about 8, and we hit the Loop just before 9, so it seemed we were on track. We did stop several times for pictures along the way, so it wasn't a total drudge, but I was a bit anxious about our progress at times, most notably during breakfast when I was advising Teresa on what she should eat based upon how much time it would take. She did not appreciate it at all, let me know, and I tried to settle down.

As the climb progressed, we shed more and more cold weather gear, finally reducing to just one layer. Although quite sunny the wind was cold, which was a blessing as it helped us keep a good internal temp. We stopped about 3 times during the first 16 miles from the Lodge, and then 4 times during the last 8 miles, as we got more and more tired. Continually checking our time against the remaining distance, each time we said, "Okay, we can still make it." With a mile to go we could easily see the last 2 curves and the view down to the valley below was an inspiration, providing us with enough energy and adrenaline to finish at the top with 5 minutes to spare. We both were running out of gas on that last half mile, but by then there was no way we were going to be denied. Reaching the top, we let out a weak but well-earned cheer, got someone to take our picture, met some folks who had ridden up from the other side, and also some folks who were talking about the people they had seen riding up the pass and wondering what kind nuts they were. "And could you believe that tandem with all that gear on it? That is totally insane!" We had a good time agreeing with them and joking around, and at the same time feeling pretty pleased with ourselves.

It was too cold and windy to enjoy the pass for long. We ate our lunches, looked at the visitor center a little, then headed down the east side. The scenery changes quite dramatically on the east, as the rainfall amounts are considerably less. Much less vegetation, and the trees are much smaller. Also, the road was not in great condition, so we kept the brakes on for much of the descent. We met a Canadian couple on a Santana tandem (not loaded) heading up and chatted for a few minutes, they were very interested in our bike as they were hoping to get a new one soon to replace their 1992 vintage Santana. The views were excellent, and we were able to view a large glacier, Jackson, the first one that we had really seen. The We made it to St. Mary at the eastern side of the park, 50 miles from Apgar, around 3pm and setup camp at the Johnsons RV park for the night, found a place to eat and have a beer, and hit the sack fairly early.

We arose to a very nice day on Sunday, much warmer than the previous day's start. After breakfast, we headed out expecting to find a relatively easy path. We were quite surprised when the road immediately began going up and at a steeper grade than on the Going to the Sun Road. After 6 miles and 1600' of climbing we crested, once more over 6000'. I wondered why this was not considered a "pass" at this level and advertised on the map as such, since many other "passes" were considerably lower. After dropping about 500', we started back up, then down again, then back up. Finally we reached the Starr School Road, just before Cut Bank Creek and the next uphill, and turned east. At last, a fairly flat to descending road and a tail wind! We started to really cruise and made it about 2-3 miles when we heard a "ping" sound. Immediately we both knew what it was as we had heard it before: broken spoke. We stopped, looked at the damage, saw that the wheel wasn't too out of shape, opened the brake a little, and pushed on.

Our objective for the day was the town of Cut Bank, about 65 miles for the day. As we rolled into town around 1:30pm, we were feeling pretty good and it was still early, so we decided to push on after lunch. Pedaling away from the restaurant we heard it again: "ping." This one broke about 8 spokes away, and was enough to put a good warp in the wheel. So I got out the spoke wrench and trued the wheel enough so that the warp was again acceptable. We rode another 24 miles to Shelby, 89 total for the day (our longest day of the trip) and we found a nice little town, a nice little hotel, a nice little park with a nice little band performing (the Flathead Community Band), and enjoyed a nice big dinner. I discussed the spoke situation with my cousin, Bill Murray, who lives in Billings MT. He offered to help in any way possible and provided some very helpful info on the HUGI hubs (he has the same wheels on his Co-Motion single bike) that allows one to remove the cassette (the bundle of 9 gears on the rear wheel) without any tools.

The next bike shop was 103 miles away, in Havre MT. We decided best hope was to try to make it to Havre to get the wheel relaced with a stronger spoke pattern. So we pushed off from Shelby hoping to take advantage of the tailwind that got us there. The wind was promising as we left town, and we were making good headway. After about 18 miles: "ping". This one was just two spokes over from the first one that went, and it would be impossible to true the wheel enough to ride it without replacing the spoke. We did have 3 spare spokes with us, but they were for the old wheel were way too long. Our options were down to two: repair the wheel or find a ride. I also carried with us a tool called a "fiber fix spoke," which is a kevlar string that you can use in place of a spoke in such cases. Thanks to Bill's information about removing the cassette from the hub, I was able to remove the old spoke and replace it and true the wheel with this fiber fix spoke in about an hour or slightly more. Never having used this tool before, and not knowing when the next spoke was going to go, we gingerly rode the remaining 85 miles to Havre, arriving in town around 6:30pm. After calling the bikeshop owner to be sure he could help us the next day, we found another RV park in town, setup our tent, showered, hit the restaurant attached to the RV park and motel (two for one Moose Drool beer), and hit the sack, thoroughly worn out (especially the bum).

Today was really good. We got the wheel fixed, ate well, got haircuts (thanks, Marilynn, next to Teresa in the tie-dye), at the Gloden Belle Beauty Salon, had great ice cream at Scotty's and witnessed the ice cream eating record get smashed by John (in the Blue Pony t-shirt and red swim shorts). The previous record for 12 scoops - 36 oz. - of ice cream was 13:30. We watched John turning red, hand shaking as brain freeze set in, finish in 6:o3! We bought supplies, had espresso, sent 8 lbs of cold weather and/or no longer needed gear to Michigan, toured the Havre Railroad Museum (Havre is a major repair center for the BNSF railroad) and took the Havre Underground City Tour. This last item is quite interesting. After a fire in 1904 that leveled most of the town (at that time 20-30,000 people), and without a way to rebuild in less than 2-3 years, the businesses decided to conduct business from their basements. To do this, they built hallways/passages under the sidewalks that would connect the businesses and allow commerce to continue. Several sections of this underground city are preserved, and you actually walk under the sidewalks and into the basements of the existing buildings that on the surface. The displays, authentically equipped with period pieces and collections donated or on loan from local individuals, included a barber shop, a Studebaker service shop, a saloon, a bordello, a saddlery, a blacksmith, a meat shop, a bakery, a pharmacy, and others. I recommend taking the tour if you are ever in Havre.

Tomorrow we push on, hoping to reach Williston ND by the end of the week, possibly Saturday. May we find more tailwinds and good roads.