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New Day Cafe - The Bike Saga Continues. Busy Highways, and Montana Hospitality [1]

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Date: 2025-09-04

This is the 15th installment detailing the bike trip that my brother and I took in 1971. Last week’s story is here. Each diary contains a link to the previous one.

July 3, 1971

It might have been early July, but it was all I could do to stay warm in the sleeping bag. When we finally dragged ourselves out of the tent, we saw ice on the picnic table. The morning was even colder than the high elevations of Yellowstone. Very uncharactaristic of us, we were packing up before 6am. Why so early? One, we couldn’t sleep. Two, we wanted to get ahead of the holiday traffic. Three, we hoped to reach the Missoula post office before it closed for the weekend.

Drummond city park, 2018 photo.

We sipped on hot chocolate at the local restaurant. This was not a day for ice cream! At 6:15 we were westbound for Missoula.

For the first ten miles, we shivered in the morning air, to which we were adding a wind chill by our forward motion. Gradually we warmed up, allowing us to better appreciate the scenery we were passing.

The highway had begun following Clark Fork yesterday, and would do so across much of western Montana. Patrick and I saw so many bridges with signs reading “Clark Fork” that we began to wonder if that was the name of every stream in the state!

Clark Fork at Drummond, 2018 photo.

An hour’s ride before Missoula, Patrick had another flat tire, our third such incident in two days. It turned out that the wide shoulders on the Interstate were littered with nails, broken glass, and other debris. Upon inspecting the tire, Patrick noticed that it was worn thin. He had carried a spare all the way from Sterling, Colorado. This was a perfect time to put it to use.

Repairs done, we wheeled on to Missoula and found the post office. To our chagrin, the customer service section had closed at noon. A box of homemade cookies was in that building with our names on it, and it was the Saturday of a holiday weekend. This was a desperate situation! First it’s too cold to enjoy ice cream, and now our cookies are locked up. Someone suggested that we go to the back door; sure enough, we got our mail. We wandered around to the front of the post office where we met a guy named Al who was on his bike.

Homemade chocolate chip cookies. Worth beating on the back door of the post office, even if they were a week old by the time they reached us.

Al was a Canadian from the Vancouver area, studying at the University of Montana. Naturally he was intrigued by our destination. He offered us a place to stay, as he had a motor home in his driveway that was not being used.

We discussed possible routes for the remainder of our trip. Lookout Pass on the Idaho state line was going to be difficult, he said, but we really didn’t have any alternatives. We also called our sister and brother-in-law in Vancouver to get their advice. Between the two conversations, we decided that US Highway 2 would be the best route across Washington.

In 1971 it was a common occurrence for long distance phone calls to get disconnected. Our call to Vancouver was cut off three times within a few minutes. But we were able to converse long enough to gain some clarity about the upcoming 600 miles.

July 4, 1971

In contrast to yesterday’s hurried start, we stayed at Al’s house until after noon. Holiday traffic would still be an issue. We decided that fifty miles of pedaling would be enough. It was 1:40 when we finally rolled down Missoula city streets and out towards I-90.

The highway continued along Clark Fork, crossing it on occasion. One bridge in particular was scary because it was long, and had no shoulder or pedestrian lane. We waited for an opening in the traffic, and rode as hard as we could until we reached the safety of the other side.

In some locations, we were able to take old Highway 10 and frontage roads in order to stay off the busy Interstate. Generally this was the right choice, but there was one time that the frontage road turned north from the valley, winding into the nearby hills. We had to backtrack and return to the Interstate.

Typical view along I-90 west of Missoula. 2018 photo.

Near the town of Alberton, found a spot on a side road in the shade of tall pine trees. We munched on ham sandwiches while enjoying the forested hills around us.

Five miles down the road was a rest area where we took another break. The wind had come up and was blowing against us. We waited for the breezes to moderate before continuing onward.

1971 highway map. We stayed at the rest area just north of the bend in the highway at Tarkio.

Our destination was a Forest Service campground that doubles as a highway rest area. It’s the only one of its kind that I know of. Countless thousands of people have stayed there over the years. We did not arrive until 8:30, but more than an hour of daylight remained. I noted in my journal that the days were noticeably longer at this latitude.

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