Day Forty-eight

Those Adventure Cycling Association guys really know what they’re doing. The route from Eureka, down Route 36 along Lake Koocanusa is absolutely gorgeous. It’s perfect for biking too, with a nice, wide shoulder and not much traffic. And the lake is almost as beautiful as Glacier. The ride was exactly what I was looking for: mild climbs with lots of fast, scenic downhill runs.

I rode almost 70 miles today, which is pretty impressive, considering I got kind of a late start. Unfortunately, our air mattress has developed a slow leak. We always pump it up right before bed, but lately by morning, it’s almost completely flat. Since we’re on the tail end of the journey, we’ll just deal with it for now. But that may have something to do with our decision to find a cheap motel tonight. We packed everything up fairly quickly, but it rained last night, so a lot of our stuff was wet. The tent would have to be spread out so it could dry out.

We drove into Eureka to find a place to have breakfast, and we found a good one that had very reasonable prices. It was called Jax’s, and we sat down at the bar. Once again, we had a really good cup of Montana coffee. Chuck ordered a pancake, and I had 2 eggs over easy, 3 little biddy pancakes, and a lot of hashbrowns and the whole thing came to $10.00. I thought that was pretty darn good.

We stopped in at a health food store, partly because we were so thrilled to find one, and partly because we needed a few things. I was completely out of snacks for my bike. I bought a few Clif bars and some electrolyte chews that were on sale, and turned out to be totally yummy. Wish I had more! We also bought some jasmine soap.

I set out towards Libby and Chuck said he’d leave Eureka in about 2 hours, since we knew we would not have cell phone coverage around the lake. It was a beautiful ride and at one point, I looked over to my right, towards a ravine and couldn’t believe what I saw. It was a bald eagle, sitting on a branch over the ravine. It was pretty far away, but I took some pictures, and I think you’ll be able to see it when I zoom in on my computer. That was a thrill.

Chuck pulled up around 12:30 for a lunch break. He brought a veggie burger and a fantastic huckleberry malt. It was just what I needed. I inhaled it, and kept on riding. Chuck didn’t go far ahead of me, since we had no cell phone. He wanted to make sure I was OK (sweet).

We met up again at the Libby Dam, pretty impressive. The visitor center was on the other side, though, and we didn’t feel like going over. On to Libby! We stopped at a “cheap” motel, the Evergreen. I told him about my ride and he had me fill out the registration card. I said, “Before I fill this out, how much is the room?” He said, “$65” We both looked at each other. “That’s just too much.” He said he’d go down $10. I said, “How about $20?” and he agreed. Judging by the place, $40 is where he should have started. We had a lot of cable channels, but the wifi did not work, the bed was REALLY uncomfortable, and we couldn’t get the A/C working. The guy at the office had just bought the motel 4 days before we got there, and wasn’t familiar with the area at all. We went to a store down the road and the lady there was incredibly nice. She said we simply HAD to go down Route 56. We didn’t realize our route already took us that way. And she recommended a Mexican place down the road that had “ginormous” plates of food. We went down there and had a pretty decent dinner: shrimp enchiladas with rice and beans.

Went back to the hotel and watched my favorite shows on the Food Network and Travel Channel and went to bed too late. Oh, well.