I got up at the ridiculously early time of 8:00, anxious to get on the road to Glacier. I had a bit of a sad moment when I realized that the big, juicy orange I had bought for breakfast was really a small, dry grapefruit. That sucked.
I climbed out of Columbia Falls along Highway 486, having been warned that US 2 would be too dangerous to ride, even though it's much shorter. I had to ride a bumpy 5-mile gravel road to get to the park, and every passing car sent up clouds of dust that I could barely see through. At least I enjoyed beautiful views when the dust finally cleared. I stopped for a snack along the shores of the middle fork of the Flathead River, where fly fisherman wade out into the powerful current.
Once I got back onto pavement, I picked up speed, even though I was riding uphill. I hit the gateway town of West Glacier for lunch, then entered the park.
'Bout time, I'm there
I reached the Apgar visitor center at 11:30. I knew that Glacier had some crappy bike rules, so I went into the visitor's center to ask about them. The ranger behind the counter got in my face and told me that if I rode my bike in the park, it would be confiscated and I'd be fined $1,000. I asked about alternate routes to Sprague campground, and he told me that there were none and I'd have to wait until 4 pm.
Now I suppose he gets a lot of grief because of the park's policies, but his attitude pissed me off. And I usually like everybody! (sarcasm)
He basically told me that too many bicyclists were causing accidents, so they finally banned bikers from 11:00 to 4:00. I tried to pin him down on how bikers were causing the accidents (Are they bumping RVs off the road?), but he kept giving me the same line of crap, so I went outside and spent the next four hours fuming about Ranger Dipshit.
At least the view was nice:
I was still pissed at 4:00, when I got back on the bike. I set off down the road, which was under heavy construction. I road through a lot of oil (miserable and dirty), following McDonald Lake as I approached Logan Pass, the biggest climb remaining on my journey. The construction was miserable, and when I reached the campground and discovered that it was full (it had filled up around 3:30, while I was sitting at Apgar Village), I snapped. I turned around and started riding out of the park. I was too pissed off for words, so I refused to even stay at the campgrounds in the park.
I stopped to wait for the construction pilot car, and while I was waiting, I noticed a hole in my back tire. No biggie, I was planning on replacing it anyway. Not like this day could get any worse, right?
Wrong. Just before I reached the gravel road back to Columbia Falls, my front rack broke. The mounting bolt on the right side of my front wheel snapped, shearing off the end, which stayed inside my front fork. I couldn't get the broken piece out of the fork, so I had to transfer my right pannier to the rear rack -- not something I really wanted to do, since my rear wheel has a history of broken spokes on paved roads, not to mention gravel ones.
The weight of my left pannier started to bend the rack, so I had to duct tape it into place. The weight if it made the bike steer to the left, but at least I managed to rig it to where it stopped rubbing on my tire.
So my day ended like this: pissed at a ranger, covered with construction oil, unable to check into my campground because of the bike delay, riding on a rear tire that's about to pop, with a broken rack that threatened to wear a hole in my front tire. I decided to press on to Whitefish, where I hoped that the bike shop would live up to its reputation. The last thing I wanted was to have to extract that broken bolt myself.
I bonked about 4 miled from Whitefish. It sucked.
I HATE GLACIER.