"Please God, smite me now"

Leaving Whitefish seemed to be harder than expected. I had a few errands to run before leaving town. These were done before 12:30 but then we had to get pizza. Well, a combination of miscommunication and beer led us to finally leaving town at 3:00. I have learned that I will no longer drink before the day is over.

About five miles into Highway 93, there was a left hand turn onto a few backroads. Somehow, on these backroads I made a complete circle, about 6 miles, and ended up exactly where I had made the turn off Highway 93. I couldn't have even done this if I tried. I was dumbfounded and majorly dissapointed when I found myself heading back to Whitefish. About forty-five minutes had been wasted.

For the next couple hours, I panicked about making it to Eureka, MT before dawn. It wasn't about it being dark, it was about the low of 25* rolling in after the sun stopped warming Montana for the day.

I had no service and no ability to contact Josh. At 6:45, I gave up and found a pristene stealth camping spot next to a lake. Sitting there for about ten minutes, I thought "to hell with this" and decided to pedal my ass off to Eureka. I made it before the sun went down and Josh was waiting, sitting on a picnic table in the town park.

Today. I took an alternative route on the maps.

Ten miles out of Eureka, Lake Koocanusa comes into view. The Kootenai River, coming down from British Columbia, CA was dammed in 1975, about 42 miles south of where I came onto it at the Libby Dam. This dam created Lake Koocanusa or the Koocanusa Reservoir. Check out it's name. KOO: named for the original river. CAN: Canada. USA: United States. 

Anyhow, there's Highway 37 on the west side and another road that's just named the Eastern Alternative on the maps. I took the alternative and Josh took 37. For 50 miles and about 5 hours, I never had a single car come up behind me. Only 5 vehicles passed me from the opposite lane. I really couldn't figure out why the road was so seldom traveled. It was paved...

Finally, I saw something I'd been looking for since back in New Hampshire; a moose! I was coming down a steep embankment on the bike when I saw, down the road, an awkward looking deer. He gazed up at me and then immediatelly began a trot at top speed in the opposite direction. Its bulbous knee-caps connecting its twig legs looked to buckle with each gallop. Looking more like an old arthritic horse than a moose, I continued to give chase. Surprisingly, I never got that close. I got it on a video but no photo exists of the sprinting moose. I stopped to eat lunch as it continued its frantic pace down the mountainside.

I ended up seeing more wildlife on the path then humans or cars. I think it's my most favoritest road I've ever traversed. Other than the moose, I saw two deer (not White-tailed) climbing an extremely high mountain face, zig-zagging up the structure. I also saw an Opsrey gliding directly overhead of me, running parallel to my path. I'm also fairly certain I found three different Bald Eagle nests. Absolutely gigantic homes built in dead trees with sticks, not twigs. I dunno though, could've been anybody's nest.

I found Josh at a Subway in Libby and we hung out there for an hour. We both got the server's number, she wrote it on a napkin saying "Call Me Maybe". That was pretty cool, our only success with girls about 3 and a half months in... about time.

So... tonight sucked. After Subway we went to find the campground at 905 West(!!) 9th St. I had taken out my contacts at the Subway so I was blind as a bat. Well... As you'd probably guess, we followed Josh's GPS around the block in a circle and then to 905 East 9th St. We looked there, running about for an hour before I called the police and realized our error. Two miles on the other side of the city, we found the campground. Josh got lost trying to find the self-register booth. I broke my second to last tent pole and am one away from not having a tent. And I lost my head lamp. I hate the world.