July 31: Glacier National Park

     It was kind of a rough day for me.  I started riding early because I wanted to get all the way to Glacier National Park which was roughly 65 miles.  It was probably only 45 degrees and within minutes my fingers were painfully cold.  Rather than stop and dig out the gloves I had packed deep in one of my panniers, I continued on thinking the warming sun would be up over those mountains any minute.  Wrong.  It was easily an hour.
     When the sun did show itself, it got hot very quickly.  Then there was the road construction.  There was the wrong turn that cost me a mile.  There were the hard climbs uphill.  There was the sore ass.  And worst of all, there was the forgotten bike helmet.  I took it off to shed a long-sleeved shirt after the sun came out.  I took a long drink of water.  I went over to a wooded area to pee.  I got back on my bike and rode maybe two miles before I realized I had left my helmet on a guard rail along Highway 63. 
     I was faced with another momentous decision:  Ride back two miles and get the helmet or risk 14 miles into Whitefish where I could buy a new one.  I chose the former.
     Oh, wait.  There was something worse than the helmet incident.  There were a couple of three or four mile sections that were the most treacherous riding I have ever done.  The shoulders were ridiculously narrow, and moreover they were crumbling away to nothing.  And big trucks, especially logging trucks, barrelled down the highway mercilessly.  I was scared out of my gourd.  At times I chose to ride in the brown grass beyond the shoulder.  At one point a tanker truck went by me within inches of my left elbow.  I was glad I went back for my helmet.

     When you reach camp, however, all of those terrible things are forgotten.  In fact, I am sorry I wasted the last four paragraphs with all my bitching.  I am parked in Glacier National Park's Apgar Campground.  It is easily the ugliest campground I have had on this trip, yet I am blissfully content.
     I just wanted to back up for a minute.  In Whitefish I stopped for a new inner-tube at Glacier Cyclery.  While there, I met a gal from Spain and a guy from France who were riding a tandem bike from Connecticut to Vancouver, BC.  They were at Glacier Cyclery because, in their words, their bike was sick.  We talked for awhile and I wanted so badly to ask them if they were going to the Rainbow Festival.  They just had that look.
     One more thing.  From Whitefish to West Glacier, a distance of about 30 miles, I noticed that at least 75% of every business had either "mountain," "glacier," or "grizzly" in its name.  You could probably verify that on Google.




Great scenery.  Bad smile.