Mainstream - Day 14: Kooskia to Wilderness Gateway

Today we met up with the official TransAmerica trail, which I expected to bring more cyclists. I saw some loaded bikes outside a cafeteria and stopped in to meet Bart, Ian, and Tom, all of whom were middle-aged guys who had started out solo but recently ran into each other like the New Yorkers and I. I left them behind and headed up highway 12 toward Lolo Pass and the Montana state line without any real plan about where to camp.

Highway 12 followed the fast and beautiful Clearwater River the whole day. Every hour for the first 4 hours, a cyclist with a Norwegian flag zipped by going the opposite direction and asked me if I’d seen their friends. In each case, I had just enough time to yell “Yep!” before they were gone. I guess that’s all they needed to know. 60 miles in, I saw another cyclist coming up from behind. Bart caught up with me and mentioned that he was staying in the campground just ahead, so I figured I’d join him. Since I still had time in the day, though, I stopped at a historic ranger station first. While there, I spoke with Dan, who was going westbound and didn’t know what to do now that his trip was coming to an end. I later discovered that Dan was one of The Three Dans and Jeff (?), who were traveling as a group. One of the caretakers of the ranger station, an 82-year-old man, told me how he cycled Yellowstone last year including one 80-mile day. I decided to never complain about anything.

I met Bart and Ian at the Wilderness Gateway campground, which is actually a pretty tame name compared to everything else around here like Deadman Creek, Dead Mule, Lost Horse, Starvation Creek, Last Chance, and so on. Bart has a number of Grateful Dead jerseys and glued a Lego Jerry Garcia to his handlebar stem. He’s also more a talker than a listener, but his stories about windsurfing and drugs were pretty interesting. Bart seems to be the fast and free-spirited counterpart to Ian, who thoroughly plans everything and rides slowly, but who rides all day and gets to where he planned. He also does not like when things go against his plans, like when an earlier campsite had no water even though he called and they promised that they did. Ian also rode the Southern Tier across the US by himself last year, and decided to continue on with the Trans-Am this year. Tom arrived later. Tom’s an engineer like me, though he “only” has 10 weeks off to cross the country before going back. He’s been bike touring since he was 15. I left my fluorescent orange poop shovel in the ground outside the campsite to signal Ethan and Jon, who showed up a while later. They hadn’t actually seen my sign, so it was just chance that they stopped where they did. The six of us split a campsite, talked a bit, and went to sleep.


Here's an ominous sign, possibly related to all the scary names around here:




A shot of the constant river view we had today:




I forgot to mention that there were butterflies everywhere - here's one that landed on my shoe. Very disappointed that my phone focused on my shoe, not the butterfly, but it's nice nonetheless:




Finally, the fully assembled adventuring party: