After the clouds cleared last night I thought the rain was over, but at 3 in the morning I was awoken by drops pattering on my tent. The rain lasted around an hour, and I got up as soon as it stopped, greeted again to low clouds in the sky. I packed up a wet tent and pointed my bike towards Lolo Pass.
Leaving at 5:30 am really helped with the traffic, I mostly had the road to myself all the way to the pass which was really nice. As I got to the pass I entered the clouds, and the final mile or so visibility was really low.
From the pass it is all downhill to Lolo and then mostly flat to Missoula. The ridgeline at the pass is the state border, so at the pass I set my clocks forwards one hour, back again to Mountain Time, and entered Montana.
The valley quickly opened up on the descent, after being stuck in a green tunnel yesterday it made a change. Lolo Peak stood prominent to the south with a snow covered summit. From Lolo to Missoula there was a dedicated bike route the entire length which was really nice because the road was very busy, and there were quite a few local cyclists out and about.
Adventure Cycling Association, who publishes the Trans America route has their headquarters in Missoula and invites people in when they pass through. On the wall they put a polaroid of people who pass through, color coded by direction, so I stopped to have my photo taken and nab a free ice cream sandwich.
The rest of the day in Missoula was spent running errands in town, and I’ll spend tonight in town. It’s a cute small city surrounded by mountains on every side. Today the weather was imposing and I had to seek shelter from short sharp showers twice while out and about.
Missoula is the end of section 3, which puts me 974 miles into the trip, after tomorrow I’ll be over 1,000. It seemed so daunting at the start, and even still looking at how much farther I have to go it still seems daunting, but its taken me through some amazing parts of the country so far. The next section ends at Yellowstone west entrance, I can’t wait, the few people I’ve talked to going west bound have all told me the Grand Teton is a highlight and one of the most striking mountain ranges they’ve ever seen, so I’m really looking forwards to that.