The official Adventure Cycling Association maps I’ve used since Hartford, Illinois (just north of Saint Louis) directed me into Missoula proper, but in reality Lewis and Clark didn’t make it that far north. At Travelers Rest they headed west through the mountains again, via the Lolo pass, a Nez Perce trading road that follows a ridgeline of the Rockies for about two hundred miles. I was only twenty miles away from Missoula at Travelers Rest and decided to forgo biking there. Theory: the Adventure Cycling only directs through Missoula because that’s where their official headquarters is. So just as I drove into the city after lunch and a jaunt through a state historical site, the next morning we drove back to where I left off before I started on my final mountain pass.
Cycling maps can be particularly confusing. Since between bike paths and gravel roads, they often lead riders onto roads not oft traveled, a regular road map doesn’t suffice and they are made up of a number of close-ups at a variety of different scales. I’d gotten pretty good at reading them. I got the elevation graphs, the mileage, what was a turn versus a waypoint. I didn’t even need a whole hand to count the number of times I’d made a mistake. Heck, I can only specifically remember two instances. Even if there were more, as I neared the end of my journey and fast approached 5,000 miles even if I made one or two more mistakes I’d forgotten my record was pretty good. This mountain pass error wasn’t about going in the wrong direction. This was misjudging where the peak of the mountain was. Usually I try not to end my day by climbing a mountain. Well, this time I did.
A good portion of this road was ranches interspersed with pine trees. I felt safer than I had on previous passes and a whole lot more confident about bears. Generally they don’t hang out in settled areas. My mom and I stopped for lunch at a picnic area–I may have been a little twitchy about some spilt jelly, but it was nice not feeling like the wilderness was an impossible task anymore. I passed moose crossing signs and elk crossing signs. I thought I might actually have a sighting considering I wasn’t in a noisy car, but it was quiet save for the occasional car.
I talked my mom into booking a cabin at Lolo Hot Springs because it was on my bucket list to experience a natural hot spring, so my mom and I met in the parking lot for this camping resort before my final stint. I wanted to stop at the Lolo Pass Visitor Center. It would be an hour or two before they closed, plenty of time to experience whatever exhibits they had there before we went back to the camping cabin.
I was under the impression that I only had about ten miles to the visitor center. It was closer to twenty miles of the steepest consistent slopes I’d experienced thus far. I kept on telling myself it would be soon! I’d get there soon. I expected to reach the visitor center in about an hour. Instead I arrived at the top close to two hours later. I got there though and I was back in Idaho. The visitor center was still open, so I looked around, I brought my maps in to talk to an NPS ranger about the alternative route along the actual pass Lewis and Clark traveled. I knew it was a gravel road and I wanted to know the conditions. I found out that a good chunk of it was closed due to fire vehicle traffic, that there were roads that got up to the top that my mom’s Toyota Corolla could handle, but the actual trail was a four wheel drive situation.
I was physically and emotionally exhausted, but I popped my bike onto the bike rack and we headed back down in the car. My mom was loathe to re-enter Montana after we had spent so much time crossing it, but first thing in the morning the next day we would start out in Idaho headed for Washington.
There was a bar where we got burgers for dinner, then we ventured into the hot tub. It was pretty disappointing. Yes, the hot water was natural, but it was basically a heated pool with a ledge for seating. You soaked indoors with strangers–in our case grumpy, snobby strangers who were horrified by the lack of luxury in this hot spring in the middle of nowhere Montana. I think I had more reasonable expectations. I had done a lot of research before hand to find a place with an outdoor hot spring. I was picturing being out in nature, sitting on rocks to soak. I waffled a bit about which place to go or if we should even do it. It was not what I was hoping for. I knew there was another hot spring down the road, that after a brief hike, about a mile you could soak in actual natural hot springs. I didn’t think my mom would want to hike there. If I hadn’t just biked up a mountain I might of pushed it, but I was wiped.
Our cabin was…well, odd. It wasn’t rustic wood, it was dry wall, basically a mini hotel room, which would have been fine if not for the bed situation. A creaky metal bunkbed. I enjoy bunkbeds in cabins generally, but climbed up and every time I shifted my body the entire bed shook and creaked. I finally climbed down and squeezed in next to my mom in the full size bottom bunk. It was tight quarters.
The Stars On the Horizon 