Written by Dave

Days 19-20 – June 16-17

First the formalities: Happy Father’s Day yesterday to all the dads out there. I’m happy to report that Chris and Curtis took part in the pub down road’s free beer offer. Pete passed. And today, happy 65^th birthday Chris, thanks for taking us on your trip.

When we arrived in Missoula on Saturday, downtown was crazy busy. It was Missoula’s annual Gay Pride Festival and there were people everywhere. Yesterday, Sunday, we got out for some chores and saw what is probably a more normal view of the city on a weekend, there were some folks about but no big crowds. Having crossed Idaho and the beginning of Montana, where you don’t tend to see many rainbow flags, when we arrived in Missoula we felt like we had arrived in a happy oasis in the middle of a giant conservative desert. I’m not sure exactly why by but all of us agreed that generally, as left leaning bicyclists dressed in lycra, we all felt a little safer being in Missoula starting on Saturday.

Our shopping highlight of the day yesterday was a bus trip REI. Due to our space limitations, we couldn’t really buy much at REI but everyone managed to pick up a few small essential items that we won’t likely find going forward. The best part of the trip had to be taking the bus, a normal size all electric vehicle, driven by a very friendly female bus driver. The ride was door-to-door and 100% free. Knowing that many municipalities heavily subsidise public transportation, going all free is an interesting way of making public transportation more attractive – it probably drives ridership up and it means there is no need to deal with money and/or tickets.

Today’s forecast was for snow in the hills around Missoula but the clouds have been so low, we’re not sure if any snow has fallen. It rained pretty hard this morning in town but let up a little this afternoon as we were wandering town. All in all, it was a pretty good day to not be slogging it out on the bikes and for sure, our sore legs and sore bums fully appreciated not being used today as well.

The highlight of today without question was visiting the Adventure Cycling Association headquarters. Nancy and I skipped Missoula in 1992 when we rode across the USA so it was fun today to finally be able to visit the home of the organization which has inspired so many of our adventures. They have pretty good size office with a famous adventurer’s bicycle hanging on nearly every wall. With the bikes they have placards telling grand tales of the owner’s many exploits. Jeff, of ACA, was more than happy to show us around and give us his version of the various legendary riders. We could have easily spent the entire afternoon wandering the hallways, reading back copies of old magazines and taking in the whole bike touring vibe.

At ACA we finally got our photo taken for their travel wall of fame – including Chris in our photo as the three of us eventually will make it to the east coast. It was a double honor to include Chris today, being his birthday and all. We are planning on dinner in tonight. It really has been nice to have an AirBnB where we can cook standing up and not have to worry about the wind blowing dirt in our food. We made Chris (and everyone else) egg and bacon rolls for brekkie today. Tomorrow there is a slight chance of rain in the morning and maybe a spit or two in the arvo. We’ll depart when we get a dry window. We’re heading to Darby and have about 50 miles of our route on the paved Bitterroot Cycle path.