Day 14: Bigfork to Condon

Ride time:  6:02

Average:  8.2 mph

Distance: 49.87 mi

Today was a near Double McCoy, considering we're only 8 miles from our next spot.  We awoke to a beautiful sunny morning in Bigfork.  We almost immediately began climbing out of the town and the scenery quickly changed to thick forests that smelled wonderful.  We were in the full sun throughout much of the day and it was HOT.  We sweat profusely while doing a near 6-mile climb.  The flies were quite irritating while we cranked out about 4 mph, which isn't fast enough to keep a breeze that would blow the bugs off.  Nate saw a black bear in a meadow, and then we both stumbled upon a black bear feeding on some vegetation near the road.  It was scared off very quickly, but of course, it took a toll on my nerves.

We finally pedaled into our camping spot, and as the book pointed out, it was swarming with mosquitoes.  So, I suggested that we book it to Condon, a town off of Hwy 83, about 10 miles down.  Here you go, Dan, a town and creek named after you:

We stopped at a grocery store on the way and slammed Gatorade to help replace all the fluid we lost on our ride--our 3-liter Camelbacks were drained.  We tailed a crazy thunderstorm much of the ride, but we we pretty lucky in that we were moving slower than the storm.  We came upon a patch of dense fog that came from a hail storm and the sight was pretty spectacular:

Hail-induced fog

I also ran over some ding-dong's "TO OUR CUSTOMERS" pin that gave me a nice flat about 1.5 miles from camp.  Thank you kindly for leaving your trash in the road.

Jerk.

I left the pin in it and rode carefully to Swan Valley Centre, a one-stop shop for just about everything.  It was just in time, too, because Mike, the mechanic, was just leaving for the night, but he let us into the showers, gave us a bathroom key, and told us where to camp.

Our humble abode