Susan
That Romance Author Lady
Monday dh and I rode to Kalispell, MT. We were going to go to New Denver originally, but the weather lady said there'd be rain, so we thought to heck with that and went south instead.
Gosh, was there construction. Roads completely ripped apart, gravel, long waits, 10 mph behind a pilot car, etc. We even looped up through Eureka and down to Libby again instead of going back the same way, but there was miles and miles of fresh seal coating, a.k.a. loose gravel, so perhaps we've learned to check the road conditions in addition to the weather conditions before we set out. Other than that, it was a nice trip--and it didn't rain much except for the first ten minutes as we were leaving Canada.
We only took pictures at one spot. Kootenai Falls near Libby. This is such a neat little place, with picnic tables all over the place, and it's so pretty! We hiked a rather long way down to a swinging bridge that to me looked straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. After I freaked out crossing it (and again on the way back), I was informed I would make a terrible Short Round. That's fine, since it turns out I'm great at playing that blonde lady who screams a lot. Dh should know better than to bounce me up and down on a blasted creaky old swinging bridge built of cracked boards, then!
Having survived that, we hiked all the way back the other direction and then some, looked at the falls, and made it to the bridge we crossed to get to the river in the first place. This one was from Jurassic Park, I think. Fortunately, we didn't see any pterodactyls. There are 54 stairs at the end of it. You don't really realize that until you've done all that hiking and then have to climb back up to where you parked your bike. That's a lot of stairs!
And of course, pictures of the falls. There are warnings posted all over the place about people dying in the river because it's cold, fast, deep, full of undertows... We didn't go in the water. But it sure was pretty.
A little upstream of where we were:
And a little downstream:
I kept my eye on the sky, since it's supposed to be big in Montana. In some places, I guess it looks bigger than at home. But I suspect that's only because the valleys were wider and shallower down there. If you ask me, the sky is really the same size, you can just see more of it without a bunch of mountains in the way.
Oh, and the speed limit was 70 mph a lot of the way, without much traffic. Dh's favorite part of the trip.
Including about an hour of extra "exploring" around Kalispell, first to find a Walmart and get chain lube after riding in the rain, and then to find the road to Eureka (turns out it was the same road), it turned into a 12-hour day. The person who invented seams in underwear should be shot, and that's all I'm saying about that.
Gosh, was there construction. Roads completely ripped apart, gravel, long waits, 10 mph behind a pilot car, etc. We even looped up through Eureka and down to Libby again instead of going back the same way, but there was miles and miles of fresh seal coating, a.k.a. loose gravel, so perhaps we've learned to check the road conditions in addition to the weather conditions before we set out. Other than that, it was a nice trip--and it didn't rain much except for the first ten minutes as we were leaving Canada.
We only took pictures at one spot. Kootenai Falls near Libby. This is such a neat little place, with picnic tables all over the place, and it's so pretty! We hiked a rather long way down to a swinging bridge that to me looked straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. After I freaked out crossing it (and again on the way back), I was informed I would make a terrible Short Round. That's fine, since it turns out I'm great at playing that blonde lady who screams a lot. Dh should know better than to bounce me up and down on a blasted creaky old swinging bridge built of cracked boards, then!
Having survived that, we hiked all the way back the other direction and then some, looked at the falls, and made it to the bridge we crossed to get to the river in the first place. This one was from Jurassic Park, I think. Fortunately, we didn't see any pterodactyls. There are 54 stairs at the end of it. You don't really realize that until you've done all that hiking and then have to climb back up to where you parked your bike. That's a lot of stairs!
And of course, pictures of the falls. There are warnings posted all over the place about people dying in the river because it's cold, fast, deep, full of undertows... We didn't go in the water. But it sure was pretty.
A little upstream of where we were:
And a little downstream:
I kept my eye on the sky, since it's supposed to be big in Montana. In some places, I guess it looks bigger than at home. But I suspect that's only because the valleys were wider and shallower down there. If you ask me, the sky is really the same size, you can just see more of it without a bunch of mountains in the way.
Oh, and the speed limit was 70 mph a lot of the way, without much traffic. Dh's favorite part of the trip.
Including about an hour of extra "exploring" around Kalispell, first to find a Walmart and get chain lube after riding in the rain, and then to find the road to Eureka (turns out it was the same road), it turned into a 12-hour day. The person who invented seams in underwear should be shot, and that's all I'm saying about that.
