Sorry for the late post.

The Hostel Shoppe says my rim will arrive today at noon! Wahoo.

We hit the road after sleeping in...so to not arrive at the post office before noon. After 12 miles downhill with a tailwind we were trying otu the new wheel (hub, rim, cassette).

This is us with Maria, a fellow adventurer sharing our non-vehicle camp site iwth us. Maria is travling the world via hiking. She has traveled Europe, Central America, and hopes to head for Alaska.

We had lunch at a general store, making cheese and turkey sandwiches, and hit the road.

After some initial tire troubles, we made good time and were soon at Saint Mary, and heading up the Rising Sun Highway. At least they have those nice rocks to flip you off your bike before you plummet of the ledge. Actually, I am glad they do not have guard rails on most of the road.

We want to camp just starting the highway, before the mountain climb , giving ourselves the best starting position for tomorrow.

We are camping at Rising Sun campground. We just paid $2.56 for each shower, and ate dinner at another general store. Expensive! The raindrops are hitting again. It seems to rain every day now...and the rain is cold at this elevation! Some of us have been darn cold at night and are struggling to get rest. TJ and I just put on almost all the clothes we have packed before bed. Laura is the only one not cold in the mornings...but she has a lot warmer sleeping bag.

There are mountain lion warnings in this campground. People are not supposed to walk alone, especailly Katie.

A black bear and her cub were a couple camp sites over earlier....kinda neat and a little intimidating. I just remembered, i have trail mix in my bag...gatta put that in the bear box.....don't want to forget. I caught a quick photo of just the cubs ears poking up above the grass. See it?

Tomorrow will be the first mountain pass climb for any of us.....we have been thinking about it ever since leavinng home. Can it be done? Which of us will struggle? How steep is it? Will the thin air be hard on some of us? Will it be full of snow? And a hundred more questions.

I expect Katie to dominate the hill. TJ and Laura will do fine. Rog and I are going to struggle...but all will succeed. We plan to get up at 5am to make the summet before noon. Logan pass here we come!

Oh yeah, this assumes it isn't raining. This past week and a half has been rough, full of setbacks and delays. We are a few days behind schedule. We are hoping that a good day tomorrow will get us back on track....and in the following week we can make up some time. We were only supposed to need to cover 40 miles per day in the mountains, but our delays mean we need to cover 50+ miles on several days.

Tomorrow will be a big test for us, we are hoping to do about 30 miles, with Logan pass being the biggest mountain pass of the trip at 6,650 feet.

30 mile (1325 total)