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Day 17 - June 24 - Missoula, MT to Chief Looking Glass Fishing Camp, MT - 19 miles Click on the thumbnails to view larger pictures.
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| We woke up this morning to another gorgeous sunny day with a
deep blue sky. You can see why they call Montana "big sky
country." We ate breakfast at Finnegan's Restaurant just down
the street from the Royal Motel - again we ate pancakes, eggs, and bacon.
After breakfast we walked over to the Adventure Cycling office where we were greeted with warm smiling faces. They welcomed us in, asked about the trip, took our picture, offered the use of their computer to send emails, and best of all let us visit the cyclist's lounge. The cyclist's lounge is a place to sit and chat with other riders and enjoy the snacks on hand. There weren't any other cyclists to talk to, but we didn't let that stop us from going in and enjoying a cookie and cold soda. We called the Open Road bike shop in Missoula to try and get our bikes in to be checked out for potential problems and to have a new front rack installed on Gary's bike. His old rack has been bending at one of the welds and he was afraid it was going to break. Better to replace it now than to have to try and put it back together with duct tape while on the road. The bike shop said bring them over right away and they'd work on them as soon as we got there. We were impressed! The guys at the Open Road bike shop were fantastic! They checked things out and installed the new front rack in about an hours time. The work done on each bike involved checking wheel bearings, wheel trueness, headset, bottom bracket, adjusting shifting and brakes, and adding air to the tires. The total charge for this service was $5.00 for each bicycle plus the charge for Gary's new rack. In no time at all we were on our way. The WalMart on the edge of town looked like a good place to have lunch. We haven't had a rest day since the trip started so we decided to take a short day today by stopping at Chief Looking Glass Fishing Camp, just 19 miles away. The campground was a scenic setting on the banks of the Bitterroot River. After setting up camp and cleaning up in the rest room (there were no showers) we rode into Florence to have dinner. When we got back we were greeted by swarms of blood thirsty mosquitoes. They were so vicious we had to retreat into our hot tents by 5:30. By 8:00 it started to cool down, but we still didn't dare go outside because we could see swarms flying all around the tents. At about 8:30 some local teens came to have a party, but the mosquitoes were so bad they couldn't stay. For about half an hour we were entertained by teens trying to party while wildly swatting and flailing at the pesky bugs. Our tents were rocking with laughter.
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