A very nice ride today. Lots of gentle downhills, as we're coming out of the mountains and into the Flathead valley. Beautiful weather, mild temperature and a gentle wind. The prettiest scenery was behind us the second half of the day, as we left the mountains, but we're not complaining! No flooding here, but the rivers are running high, and unfortunately someone had to be pulled out of the Flathead River this morning. Five emergency vehicles with sirens blaring went racing down the road going the opposite direction from us. We haven't heard if the person that was pulled out of the river survived.
We had biked almost 15 miles and were just outside of Columbia Falls when Margit caught up with us. She had left the campground quite a bit later than we did. She pulled over and stopped to talk and we decided to meet in Columbia Falls and have lunch together.After lunch we got in her RV briefly to look at a map, and then said our goodbyes once more. She is continuing on Highway 2 into Idaho, and we are turning south on Highway 93, and then turning west into Idaho. She left, and as we were getting ready to leave also, I realized that I didn't have my waist belt which has a water bag. and in which I keep my purse, cell phone, and various other items, including my asthma inhaler which I don't use a lot, but I feel rather insecure without it. Bill reminded me that I had taken it into the RV with me (I wasn't wearing it at the time), and we realized that I had left it there. We couldn't call Margit because I had her number on my cell phone, which of course was in the belt! To make a long story short, Margit returned about five minutes later. Turns out she had pulled over on the raod to check if she had her purse because she couldn't remember doing anything with it after we left the restaurant and got into the RV. She checked the couch, and her purse was there along with my belt! We couldn't believe that stroke of luck! I told Margit "Thank you for being paranoid about your purse!"
After that we had an uneventful ride to Kalispell. After a stop at a Walgreen's to get some items we needed we went another mile or two and are now in an EconoLodge for the night. We broke our steak (or other beef) obsession for dinner while we've been in Montana, and went for a seafood lasagna. It was delicious! We usually are reluctant to get fish in Montana or other inland states, but we'd finally reached our limit on beef!
Tomorrow we are going to try to make it to Polson,on the south end of Flathead Lake. It's 50 miles, so we're not sure we'll make that, but there is a campground about 14 miles before Polson where we can stay. As well as finding out that we don't seem to deal with adverse conditions during this bike trip as well as we used to, we are also finding that we can't comfortably go as far as we used to in one day. We used to regularly go in the high 40's or 50+ miles a day, but now those numbers look BIG! Margit reminded us that our first long bike trip was 15 years ago. Enough said.
We're on the home stretch now!
Riding on.....
Carol & Bill
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