My internal debate about routes to take east has been intensive. I have scoured the web for notes from others who might have ridden a certain route and I have zoomed in on highways, with Google Earth, to try to see how much paved shoulder I might find to ride on. Had we spent this much time researching weapons of mass destruction in Iraq we might never have had to go there!
My legs are doing well! And the load they're pushing along is doing quite well.
I decided when we picked up my bicycle and trailer in Missoula to try Highway 2 again. This is the highway I rode on between Puget Sound and Idaho. (Thanks to Tom and Jo for storing my equipment. I trust that the Marquis d Sade and the Machiavellian Humpbacked Bastard were well behaved in your garage!)
I went up Highway 93 from Missoula to Kalespell MT. where I could pick up Hwy 2. But the segment of that highway is a narrow four-lane without a shoulder until it makes the turn towards Glacier National Park so I stayed on Hwy 93 (with consistently wide paved shoulders) to White Fish MT. The connecting road hooks up with Highway 2 just outside of West Glacier. Then it's southeast and over the continental divide.
Once again I visited the St. Ignatius Mission in St. Ignatius MT. I'm not sure why other than to show it to my benevolent chase-car driver Shen. She was less than impressed having had religion force-fed to her in Salt Lake all of her life. I didn't want to go there to find anything; I didn't lose anything there the first time. But I find the idea of a priest painting two Native Americans with halos inside of a church refreshing. Especially inside an edifice owned by a big business that has been one of the champions of the single most devastating weapon of mass destruction known to humankind: religion.
But even with the rain and fog the trip to get to Highway 2 has been cold but enlightening. My goal for this last segment of this tour is to get over the Continental Divide and further at least to Great falls if I can. The weather window is closing fast. Aspen, birch, and other deciduous trees are rapidly changing color. Other than mountain maple the colors in Utah are slow to change. So, even though I new it would be so, I was surprised to see the bright yellows, oranges, and reds especially up high in Glacier and the Bob Marshal wilderness area.
Later I will write about the foolish protectionist mentality of the NPS, promulgated by an archaic Organic Act, that contributed to a fire in 2006 (I think it was that year) that according to one ranger I visited with: burned 15% of the land mass in the park and quite a bit outside of the boundary. Much of what can be seen of the fire shows a complete burn. That is: every tree killed and not even a lone live tree left here and there as an island. The fire had enough fuel and burn conditions were just right so that the fire must have been very intense and very hot. This indicates several things but the more significant one is: archaic fire management practices whose managers do not realize or admit that even in “pristine” sites, most ecologic sites are departed from properly functioning condition.
Bottom line:even in these protected areas the “hand of man” has influenced the ecology of these sites. All along the route of this tour I have observed the same denial by the USFS and BLM that most ecologic sites are seriously departed and therefore "normal" management and uses on public lands can not continue. More later.
So, I will post this and then head out on Highway 2.
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