Day 33---Riding with a buddy, and the heat returns, Missoula to Ronan

57.7 miles, 5:17, 10.9 mph

It was Sunday morning in Missoula, and the first half marathon runners were returning the hotel as we got ready.  Ben had a lot of bicycle adjustments to make, so we didn't really get started til after 8:30.  But it was a really nice cool morning for a change, and some runners from Havre took our picture before we headed out.

We left town via old US 10, West Broadway in Missoula, and Woodward Avenue in my home town of Detroit.  After crossing US 12 on Friday, which goes by Ann Arbor, the familiar highway numbers of my youth made me feel like I was really in the far north now.

As we rode along I was thinking about all the right wing billboards I'd been seeing, and we passed many more storefront Christian churches, mostly in tilt up warehouse complexes.  There weren't quite as many as there were in the Bitterroot Valley, but a surprising number given Missoula's liberal reputation.  Just near the airport we came upon the Vigilante Storage lockers, which gave me some pause!

As we reached the end of the long developed strip, near Frenchtown, I realized that the noxious odor from the pulp mill that had dominated Missoula the other times I had visited, was no longer there. A quick look and it turns out that it was closed in 2009, after many years of the locals fighting the pollution.  Of course the closure eliminated hundreds of well paid union jobs, and in the middle of the recession, I'm sure that many were still unemployed (or headed to North Dakota).

The first climb out of the Clark Fork valley took us into cool, damp forest and it wasn't too strenuous, although I was back on the loathsome US 93, with it's debris laden shoulder and cars and trucks whizzing by at 75 mph.  Since it was Sunday, it was a lot of local folks headed to Flathead Lake for the day, along with their boats on trailers.  I did see this very cool railroad bridge, right out of a Hollywood western on the way though.

Just after the first summit, we entered the Flathead Indian Reservation.

After seeing the Flathead Reservation, I was surprised it was so lovely, given that the Indians usually got the short end.  Well as it turns out.....in 1910, after the US Government decided the Indians weren't 'using' the land properly, they gave them all allotments, and then opened the rest to homesteaders....once again dishonoring a treaty.

We stopped to have lunch at the cute Bison Café, which had a No Hate sticker on the window.  Definitely a nice vibe, a little hippy, a little Indian, and Ben had delicious huckleberry pancakes....

Unfortunately after lunch the heat was turned up with a vengeance, just as we were to do the steepest climb of the day into the Flathead Lake basin.  I don't do well in the heat climbing, but with a couple of stops and lots of water, made it to the top, where the view of the Mission Range was stunning.

I want to figure out if you can climb the amazing crack in the middle of the cirque.

 

Mission Mountains

 

We hopped off the US 93 hellway, and took old US 93 into the lovely little town of St. Ignatius, which was founded by the same Jesuit missionaries that started the mission in the Bitterroot.  The grounds and church were lovely (and still owned by the church, so no donation from me this time).  They had a really great collection of old photographs of the local Indians and missionaries from the 19th and early 20th century, and it was really interesting to see how the traditional dress continued for so many years.

After a bit longer on old US 93, it was back onto the freeway which narrowed as it went through the wildlife refuge.  Virtually no shoulder and lots of traffic whizzing past.  Happily it was Sunday so there weren't many trucks.

A beautiful scene reflected in one of the ponds on the wildlife refuge

After a few more miles we ended up in Ronan, which has very little to recommend it as a town.  It was already 90 degrees though, and after 57 miles we called it a day.

We walked about a mile to the Mexican restaurant, and when I saw that both of the employees were blond, blue eyed young high school types, I thought that perhaps we should have gone to the McDonalds after all....and it was the very worst Mexican food I'd ever eaten.  The Dairy Queen was out of chocolate, so we ended up topping the evening off with vanilla cones dipped in chocolate, again a bit of a disappointment.

I went to bed really looking forward to the Mennonite restaurant for breakfast!