Day 20: Big Arm to Whitefish, MT – 55 miles

I had a hard time with my snooze button this morning — with the sun going down later and later as I go North, it’s hard to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. As soon as I smelled bacon, though, I was able to get up right away. Sharon’s brother, Alan, cooked me French toast (he also cleaned and tuned my bike up a bit after I went to bed last night) for which I was DEEPLY grateful. I hit the road and lazily cruised the rest of the way around Flathead Lake. Just shy of Kalispell, I found a bike path paralleling the highway, and it eventually routed me the back way in to town which was quiet and peaceful compared to 93.

When I got to Whitefish, I headed straight to the bike shop. Tonight I’m staying with my friend Grete and her fiancée, Zach. Grete and I went to school together in 6th grade and met again on a chairlift at a ski competition two years ago. They moved here in January and Zach works in the bike shop now…so I stopped in for directions to their house and to pick up new tires (mine were getting pretty bald. The new ones were pricey but beefy and will hopefully get me to AK with fewer flats!)

After dropping my gear off at the house, I walked back in to town for ice cream and chatted with some cyclists from South Africa on the Continental Divide route, and then met Grete at the library. We went to the grocery store to get dinner supplies and spent a lovely evening catching up. It’s so nice to see a familiar face!

Everyone in the Whitefish area is insisting I change my route to ride through Glacier on the Going-to-the-Sun road and then up through Waterton and Fernie before getting back on route. It’ll add two days of riding, but the scenery should be well worth it. I was planning to take a rest day in Whitefish tomorrow, but now I’m going to do a short ride (25-30miles) to re-stage at the bottom of the big pass in West Glacier.