Staying with Terry Tignor in Hamilton was like meeting twenty cyclists at once. Since she began to host cyclists last summer after her son biked from Virginia, she has had over 40 cyclists stay at her house. She recalled a Dutch couple who was cycling around the world continent by continent, a few groups of recent college grads, and a girl who rode a bike covered in tinsels and stickers with no maps. Talking to her has made up for the lack of fellow cyclists I have seen on the road.
As I continued down the Bitterroot Valley, the flatland in between the mountains grew from a width barely able to fit a main street to the several miles. Twenty miles before reaching the city of Missoula, I turned left to head over the Lolo Pass and into Idaho. The road again followed the Lewis and Clark Trail. After the explorers them came engineers hoping to cut a railway through the pass, but gave up, lamenting that this range was one of the most difficult they had come across. In 1995 a period of high winds devastated the area through the pass. While much of the dead wood was carted out for milling, the destruction remains obvious.
My first view of Idaho on the west side of the pass was stunning. The road spiraled precipitously downward towards a steep-bottomed gushing river. I made it down to a packed US Forest Service Campground fifteen miles after the pass. I am writing this listening to several distinct varieties of country music and a drunken fight.
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