Day 7- Whitefish/Columbia Falls

It was a foggy morning at the hostel in Polebridge. I tried to be as quiet as possible as I packed up to not wake up the other hostel guests. We were basically in one big loft room, the men at least. Andy decided to take the shorter, less hilly route to Columbia Falls due to his knee, while I opted to get back on the original route, which meant I had to double back on the diversion for another 5 miles. I did want to see Red Meadow lake at the top of the pass.

The little bakery was luckily open early, so I had a nice latte coffee and a huge Huckleberry bearclaw pastry. I bought a huge ham & cheese sandwich, and tossed my convenience store bought burrito in the trash. The name of the burrito was “The Bomb”, which didn’t inspire confidence..

I wish there were more of these kind of places along the route!

The ride up to Red Meadow pass wasn’t too bad, other than the last couple miles. It was beautiful, and I am glad I took this route. It was about lunch time so I took out my freshly baked sandwich and sat at a picnic table. It was so big that I could only eat about half of it, so I saved the rest for later.

Red Meadow lake

It was bigger than it looks.

The rest of the route was mostly downhill towards the town of Whitefish. Whitefish is really an anomaly in the state of Montana. Probably similar as Banff is in Alberta, Canada, and Jackson is in Wyoming. All attract people with ridiculous amounts of wealth who build big and expensive 2nd (or 3rd) homes there.

I did run out of water along the way, but there were plenty of cold mountain streams along the route to filter for drinking. That will become more difficult further south where it is hotter and dryer. Oh well, a problem for another day.

Filtering drinking water from the stream

I rode by Whitefish lake where more of these opulent homes started to appear. The route went along the outskirts of the town of Whitefish towards Columbia Falls, which was fine for me since Linda and I had been there a couple times before, and like most tourist places can be pretty crowded.

I arrived in Columbia Falls about 30 minutes before the post office closed. I had decided to ship a few things home that I am not sure I would be making enough use of for the weight penalty. So, the drone, larger tripod, and stool got boxed up and were sent on their way by horse and buggy. I was disappointed to not be taking the drone, but the reality was that it was a bit of a hassle to setup, and the batteries didn’t last that long. I might have Linda bring it to Steamboat later. We’ll see…

I left the post office with what already seemed like a much lighter bike. It could have been my imagination.. I found what was really the only camping option in town, which was an RV park. It was a more upscale one, but the tent sites were nothing to write home about. Well, at least the showers were very nice and they had a laundry room. My clothes were overdue for a good wash.

The good part was that I was within easy walking distance of a good Mexican restaurant and an ice cream afterwards. Andy was staying in a different campground out of town, but did say it was very loud near the highway. I found that there were an unusual high number of loud trucks and motorcycles in Columbia Falls. I should not complain about that at home anymore (but I will 😁).

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