whitefish, MT

So... I have biked over the Rockies. All the way up, and all the way down. From Cut Bank we made it into St. Mary's the "Gateway to Glacier National Park" after a very long hard very hard ride. It took me 6 hours on the bike to go just over 60 miles. I will spare you the details because i just dont want to think about that day. Lets just say headwind. The last part of the ride (15 miles) was great. We were entering mountains and the backdrop was intimidating because we new we had to climb it the next day. But the change of scenery inspired me to just pound out the ~2,000 ft elevation climb after being harassed by the wind all day. I saw a group of wild horses and trees... yup we made it to trees. So after the climb we got this amazing downhill looking over the Rockies down into St. Mary's. The wind hadn't died down at this point either so even going downhill (12% or something like that) we were still only going 18mph. But we made it. Our campsites were in a great location and everything was hunky dory and despite the fact that we were camping, it didnt rain! Sadly the wind stayed all night. But the Camping went well for the first time on our trip.

The next morning (11th) we woke up to climb the Rockies. The wind was still there (i guess it really likes us) and the temperature was around the 50s something that is very new to us all. Despite the cold and wind the ride up and down the Rockies was breathtaking. I must have taken 300 photos during the two days and each one of them is spectacular. Bikes wernt allowed on a certain part of the park between 11am-4pm so we planned to just spend all day in the park and ride out after 4. This was one of the best decisions i have made on the trip. We made it to the Continental divide (6.650 ft or something) around 1pm and still had 55 miles to ride and an entire park to see. So we took our lovely time going down with barely enough room for cars. the sun was poking though the clouds every once in a while spaying light over the mountains and the glacier water below. Many pictures later we made it to the bottom at 4 and then stopped for more food and pictures. After the mountain there was still quite a bit of riding to do. we still had 40 miles left and the entire ride out of the park was perfect. We were following Lake McDonald and enjoying the greenish blue glacier water. i jumped into one of these rivers as a white water rafting trip was passing (calm section dont worry mom) and this was the coldest water i have ever been in but the river was just calling for me. Then we had "lunch" at mile 51 around 630pm... and i still had 25 miles to go. So after being in slight shock from the river and lack of food i ate as much as i could handle and I raced the sun to my destination of Whitefish. Needless to say I won, yet it didnt really matter because the van broke down again standing all of our stuff until about 10 pm that night. luckily the church members at the First Pres are amazing and arranged to tow the trailer with all of our stuff to the church so we could all change and go directly to sleep.

today was supposed to be a day off but we ended up having a optional surprise build day. The Habitat site that we worked at was extremely organized and just put us right to work and it was a great way to spend part of the day. We shingled about half of the roof with the help of the excellent site supervisor then called it a day. Now i am exhausted and need a day off....already. But Whitefish is an amazing little town and has been a lot of fun to have our day off in i wish i could spend a few more days here. But VANCOUVER HERE WE COME