Coast to Coast 2023

 6/29/23  Sand Springs to the Flowing Wells Rest Stop, MT.   We packed up quickly this morning, eager to get out of the grasshopper infested greenhouse. Unfortunately, minutes later Kayla started to break out in hives :(. So we sat outside the convenience store/ post office with our kitty cat friend and waited for the Benadryl to kick in. Shoutout to Kayla for being a tough cookie, staying calm, and getting on the bike when the hives started to die down.  In the morning, I felt at peace biking through the landscape. It is beautiful in its own unique way. The long grass bends in the wind. Cacti line the road. Eventually, the grass became sage brush and the rolling hills became wind carved mounds with exposed rock layers. Apparently, tons of dinosaur fossils have been found here, I can picture dinosaurs roaming around these plains.  30 miles in we finally came across something, the town of Jordan! We love to loiter at grocery stores, but today we were fancy and bi...

 Maura here writing in from my tent at the end of a much-appreciated rest day in West Glacier. We planned this rest day strategically to line up with all the excitement and celebrations of yesterday, and the group also splurged to stay at a “KOA resort” for these 2 nights. Although we’re still in tents this place is luxury to us! The campgrounds are complete with a pool, hot tub, cafe, general store, ice cream shop, dog park, airstream cocktail bar, and live music every night. All with a backdrop of Glacier’s dramatic, jaw-dropping mountainscape. You better believe we utilized allll of those amenities today! It’s been a glorious day of sleeping in, chilling by the pool, reading, laughing, and eating good food. I know the group is feeling rejuvenated to be off our bikes for a day. We especially loved the live singer who serenaded us at the end of the night during our camp dinner and huckleberry cocktails. I also very much appreciated all of the cute dogs here! I may or may not have ...

 Day 22: 6/28/2023 We woke up at the “Little Montana Truck Stop”, which I think we’ve decided was not our favorite sleeping location. Something about being in the back of the gas station doesn’t feel quite right I don’t think. Liz went to the bathroom and was immediately stared at by all of the cowboys that were drinking their morning coffee in the diner connected to the convenient store. We were clearly out of place. As we were getting ready, we realized it was going to be a scorcher so we loaded up on sunscreen and got after it. It started off as a nice smooth slow ride and then our biker friend Ron (refer to Kayla’s post yesterday for details) appeared again, chatted our ear off for a few minutes, before again deciding we biked too slow and sped off. Ride continued on pretty uneventful for the next few hours - these hours were filled with Big Bootie remixes…. 4 of them to be exact !!! We all rode behind Kayla and sang along to the hour long mash ups, it honestly made the time fl...

 6/27/23 C2C - day 21 - 1000 miles!! At 9:30am this morning we officially crossed our 1,000th mile!! It was a relatively unremarkable point somewhere in Montana, but it was a very meaningful point to us. As 3 women who had never biked more than 70 miles in a day, and had just purchased our bikes last year, we all felt a sense of disbelief and pride at the fact that we were out here doing this and had made it this far. It has been such a wild ride to bike 1,000 miles, both mentally and physically, I can’t wait to see what happens in the next 2,000!  Back to today - We woke up this morning after a poor night of sleep due to the sound of highway traffic and the light from a street lamp right above our tents. I resorted to sleeping with my buff over my eyes while Liz tried rolling her hat down over her eyes. Then we started our day in my favorite fashion, diner food! The diner was perfectly located next to the RV park, so it was only logical that we stop in. Of course we had to ge...

Hey everyone, Rogan with the blog today! This morning, we woke up to our noses following the smell of crepes, however my flat tire delayed us :( But after that, we were on our way to our easiest and shortest day yet, under 30 miles on pretty roads had us on good pace. But to be honest with you guys, I wasn’t really paying attention as today was the day that I had planned for a long time, I was gonna propose to my best friend of seven years, Olivia, today!! The other members of our group were amazing, hauling down the roads to scout for good spots where I could ask the question. After a long time searching, they found an amazing, secluded park that had beautiful panoramic views of the Cascades that had just begun to open before us. I knew immediately this was the spot, and now had to devise a way to get the rest of the group away so it could be just us. With their knowledge, I pretended that I left my phone at the park and asked Olivia if she would come back with me. She was confused wh...

  We woke up early on a beautiful farm in Eureka Montana. We knew that route 93 was going to be busy so we set off early for the day. As we had been warned the road was very narrow without a lot of shoulder, but since we left early the cars were few and far between. After about thirty miles we turned off onto a picturesque farm road that eventually lead us to the downtown area of Whitefish at around 1pm. After hitting up a bike store we stopped at a brewery for a delicious lunch of pizza and burgers. We all appreciated the extra time we had in the day that wasn’t filled with biking. We then explored the cute downtown area and stopped in at the local art center. When we were at the art center the skies opened up and it started pouring rain. After about an hour the rain stopped and we were able to get to camp and set up our tents. We then had to tackle the task of doing laundry after a long stretch without any laundry facilities. But as a team we conquered the many loads of laundry w...

 Claire here! Waking up this morning at McGillivray campground was quite lovely. Stunning views of lake Koocanusa, a lack of mosquitos, and perfect temperatures for biking made me feel at ease and a bit more ready to take on the day. We tackled some pretty steep hills as we rode along a quiet road that spans the length of the lake, and we're rewarded with some stunning and lengthy downhills. Unfortunately, just after lunch, we encountered some bike problems which slowed us down a bit, but we were back on the road before long. Even less fortunately, the second half of the day included much busier roads, and much less shade. Nonetheless, we eventually made it to Eureka where we immediately went for some ice cream which was homemade and SO delicious (I got banana cream pie). We then stopped at a local grocery store and picked up some produce to cook with for dinner (for the third night in a row - we are really loving adding some freshness to our dinners). This evening ended up being...

 Group 2 Day 11 (Audrey) Today’s ride was a bit shorter (only 50 miles or so), but there was no shortage of beautiful Montana scenery! We left our campsite early and were glad to get away from all the mosquitoes at Bull’s Lake. It was a little chilly, but we warmed up quickly enough with some good hills down into Troy. We stopped for veggie burgers, fries, and huckleberry shakes in Libby, a charming little town where only one person felt like swearing at us from his pickup truck. I got a little turned around because all the roads were named after other states, but luckily I’m not in charge of directions. After a quick stop into a market, we got back on the road to the next campsite in the Kootenai National Forest. We took a quiet service road to get away from the highway and had to climb (and climb and climb) over the Libby Dam, but the views from the top were amazing. Tonight’s McGillivray Campground is a peaceful spot right on the Kootenai River. Time for dinner and a game of spo...

 6/26/2023 “Anyone who says it’s all downhill once you get over the Rockies clearly hasn’t biked across the country.” - Kayla Our wonderful warm showers host (they are always the coolest/ kindest people) made us breakfast and drove us to the edge of town to start our ride. Although we’d typically say no thanks to a ride, the warm showers was off our route by a few miles and we were tired from yesterday.  The 56ish miles from Great Falls to Stanford, MT were all up and down and up again.  We took it slow as we were all hurting and in need of a “recovery” ride.  To pass time, we made phone calls to parents, significant others, and friends. We found that it was a great distraction from the climb ahead. If anyone reading this wants to chat just call me up! (I’ll probably be biking.) When I wasn’t on the phone I was teaching myself to whistle, I’ve only figured out one note so far. There were dark clouds looming over us the whole day and we know how rough it can be to get...

 6/25/2023 Okay everybody. Sit down and buckle up because we have a wild tale to tell you. Our day started off very leisurely as our original plan was just 50 miles and about 1,500 feet of elevation gain- simple, right??? Well that’s what we thought too… in fact we thought that it was just tooooo simple. After eating breakfast in the RV park laundry room that we had commandeered for charging our devices and meals, we were in no rush to start our day. We had a nice SPEEDY 25 mile ride to Shelby where we all thought… hey. if that’s how it’s gunna be (all flat, little bit of tailwind), we can definitely make it to Great Falls!! Great falls was our planned destination for tomorrow night- 112 miles away from Cut Bank where we started this morning. This, I believe, is where the Great Falls seed was planted in our determined minds. We carried on to Conrad, our original planned destination- was pretty uneventful to get there… some dirt road and some mild climbs but nothing really happened....

 Day 10 started off with a bittersweet goodbye to our lovely hosts, Judy, Steve, Renee and Clayton (and of course Coco and Luna). Then we were off to the races... Until we stopped about a mile down the road at the most wonderful farmers market for some home baked goods to take with us on the road. Then we were actually off to the races. We rode right along some beautiful Idaho lakes and mountains until we stopped in Clark Forks for lunch. I personally had one of the best salami sandwiches of my life, and picked up a couple of veggies to add to our dinner that evening. Also at lunch, Audrey officially marked eating ice cream in every state we went to thus far, before we hit the road once again. We crossed into Montana that afternoon and we're in awe of the absolutely magical valleys, rivers and meadows surrounded by towering mountains (one of which was still somewhat snow capped!) The rest of the ride was hot, but beautiful. We met our amazing sag wagon/support, Lawrence, at Dorr Sk...

Today we said our farewells to Glacier National Park and headed off into the plains of eastern Montana. The day started in our quaint little cabin with a breakfast of yogurt, bagels (half each), and naked brand smoothies after which we all still felt hungry! I guess our metabolisms are picking up after being conditioned to all of the output we have been engaged in. As we were finishing getting our bikes ready for the day a fellow camper walked to up Liz and keelin and asked if we were packin’, to which sweet liberal Liz responded with “yes, these are our packs”. He followed up with a gun hand gesture to better indicate his point and Keelin got the idea and told him we weren’t. So anyway he’s going to keep us in his prayers. Not more than 10 minutes later after we had set off biking we were treated to the inputs of another passerby who aggressively shouted out their window “y’all be safe out there”. With all of this morning encouragement we were ready to start our day in our favorite fa...

  This morning, I woke up to the sound of loud farting from our thru-hiking neighbors Mismatch and EwEw (they warned us about the snoring but not the farting). Since it was our rest day we moved slowly, but our campsite was busy. The 9 thru hikers staying at our little St Mary’s campsite in Glacier were up chatting, making breakfast, and packing up their ultra light set up. As we had our breakfast, I talked to Goose (who honks like a goose when he laughs) about music (my favorite topic) and he gave us lots of bike camping tips since he had lived on a bike for 2+ years! Eventually, we decided it was time to head to the town of St Mary’s to run our rest day errands. I was sad to say goodbye to our new friends, but luckily we just kept running into them as they worked on getting a hitch to the Canadian border.  We made it back into Glacier NP for a quick hike around Beaver Lake where we met a thru hiker from Denmark. I then took a dip in St Mary’s Lake before we sat on the shore ...

 Today we conquered Logan Pass in Glacier National Park and crossed the Continental Divide!! Honestly, after our day on Washington Pass we weren’t going to let this scare us. The only difference was that bikers are only allowed to be climbing the ascent before 11 am or after 4 pm. So we had time constraints. We woke up at the crack of dawn to try and ensure we could get an early start…. and let me tell you, it was cold!!!! After getting caught in the rain yesterday, my gloves were still soaked. My solution was to put my “emergency socks” over my hands for the beginning of the ride. Seemed to work! Lost function of my thumbs for a bit until my hand was warm enough for me to pull just my thumbs out. We biked the pass west to east and the west side was completely shaded by the mountains in the morning. Not to mention everything was covered by low sitting clouds at 6 am- no views. However, as Liz and I started biking to try and catch Kayla who left 30 mins before us, all of the clouds ...

 Today we woke to a chilly morning at Chuck and Rita’s, our lovely warmshower hosts in whitefish, MT and were treated to a breakfast of yogurt, granola, fresh fruit, and oatmeal. It was the perfect healthy fuel for a day of biking. From their house we headed over to the local market to pick up food for the next 2 days (an easy 1mi jaunt). Since we had less than 40 miles to bike we were operating at a leisurely pace and were happy to loiter in front of the grocery store (for an hour - oops!) packing our bags and getting organized. Okay then we were finally on the road, or well sort of… soon into biking we realized that we needed to change our layers, since there was on and off rain that had us feeling cold and then hot again. So that required another stop. Basically we weren’t getting anywhere fast, but we didn’t mind. The outfit changes were getting a bit ridiculous though so in order to streamline them Keelin and Liz decided to put their rain jackets over their helmets to add extr...

 Group 2 Day 9 (Audrey) Welcome to Idaho! Today we crossed our first state line, and it felt great! We have nothing against eastern Washington (who could get tired of beautiful mountains, endless fields, and friendly farm animals?), but it’s exciting to be making progress back home! Before leaving Washington, we stopped in lovely Newport for ice cream! A much needed, very refreshing break during our hottest day of biking yet. Owen’s Grocery and Deli had some spectacular homemade ice cream less than a mile from the Idaho border. Our route through the Idaho panhandle was beautiful (although much more hilly than expected). After a few rough patches along a busy road with no shoulder and a railroad detour around a collapsed bridge, we crossed Long Bridge across Pend Oreille River into Sandpoint! We met Judy and our lovely host family at tonight’s Warm Showers before heading back into town for a drink and some live music! Looking forward to another big day tomorrow!

 Rogan here! This is my first time posting so please be forgiving if it’s not up to the standards set my teammates. Today we started with some more of the beautiful backroads before getting back onto route 20. There was an initial gradual climb until we plateaued, and from there it was a waiting game of when the big drop would be. I myself thought it would be a lot sooner than it was, but it eventually came and then it was on to the fun part! After a quick lunch, we got on a backroad that was paved and empty and beautiful. I had the most fun 30 miles going down that road. The only interruptions to the serenity was the adolescent grizzly bear that I saw, although it didn’t notice us and went on it’s merry way (hopefully the last we’ll see)! After that, we had to evade an attempted assault by dogs on the road, but then we were truly done with the rudeness!! We are now resting in the best RV Campsite (thanks Olivia for finding it) and heading to bed after a round of cards! See y’all t...

 Day 7 started out with a bittersweet goodbye as we parted ways with our amazing host, Patty. We the. Took off from Republic and started pedaling towards our last pass of Washington, which would prove to be our most challenging pass yet. Getting up wasn't too much trouble, with a little bit of rain, a lot of overcast, and a good amount of heat generated by our muscles as we climbed up to the 5,575 ft "peak". Normally reaching the top of a pass signifies that most of the hard work is over with, as all that is left to do is zoom downhill and try not to crash. This descent however was met with some ice cold rain, strong winds, and some very numb extremities. Getting down that mountain was the hardest thing I've had to do this trip. I saw blue skies ahead of me, and had to keep reminding myself of how much closer I was getting to that and to warmth, in order to get through it. At the end of it, all I could feel was pride. I was so proud of my team members for getting thro...

Two weeks of biking every day!! It feels a little crazy to wake up knowing that I’m going to bike all day again. We  knew today’s route might not be great. But when you're in northern Montana there are only so many ways to get from one place to another… But anyways. We started with breakfast at Cafe Jax in Eureka. Kayla and I got our new normal, an omelet, hash browns, and pancakes. Keelin got the meat option. I charged my phone, filled my water bottles, and even brushed my teeth at that little diner.  It was cold when we left the diner so we put on all our clothes, just to take half of them off one mile into biking. We haven’t mastered the whole layering situation.  After about 10 miles we ended up on a major road from Eureka to Whitefish. I know the cars did not want us on that road, and I promise you we did not want to be there either. But there wasn’t really another option (except the occasional gravel roads that added millage and elevation). We did get off 93 at one ...

Wow, I can’t say enough amazing things about our ride today. After our typical morning routine we headed out for a spectacular cruise on rolling hills that kept us high in the mountains looking down on the reservoir that was created by the Libby dam we passed the day before. It seemed to go on and on, but that was just fine with us as we wound around the mountain side giving us new, and even better views of the water. The miles seemed to fly by- even on the bits of climbing. It was here where we took our very first “on the road snack break”… Now you may be wondering “how can it be a break if you’re on the road?”. If so, you are in good company because Kayla asked me the same thing when i suggested the name for our granola-bar-eating-while-pedaling snack time. My answer to which was “we are all about efficiency here”, which if you’ve met us was clearly sarcasm. While we do plan on finishing in a timely manner, the 3 of us sure do enjoy our slow pedal morning warm up, our extended lunche...

 This morning I woke up and rolled out of my tent to go use the pit toilet (which did not smell as pleasant as it had the night before) and by the time I got back to the campsite I felt like I was already 10 steps behind. Keelin was eating breakfast (our usual oats with PB and honey) and Liz’s tent was half down. I just wanted to curl back under my sleeping back and hang out all morning by the lake, but we had to get going. You can’t bike across the country by sleeping in and sitting by the lake after all. So, I got to packing up. There’s a lot to do in the morning to get ready for a day of biking. You have to deflate your pad and pack it away, along with the quilt and your extra clothes (all of these things go in a compression sack in front of my handle bars). Then comes the task of putting on chamois butter and then squeezing back into your bib shorts (the worst part of the morning in my opinion) and the rest of your smelly cycling clothes (you get used to the smell, I just hope ...

 Hello! On day four we biked from Winthrop to Omak. The ride started out on flat plains through the Winthrop countryside, which was sunny and beautiful. We then started the climb on the Loup Loup pass. The scrubby plants and grass turned into a steep climb with burnt tree stumps surrounding us. We trekked though and made it to the top of the pass in no time. After the top we enjoyed a nice coast down the pass for about ten miles. Eventually we made it to our campground in Omak, but unfortunately it was not the safest of places. We looked into hotels and found a Best Western nearby. What initially looked like a rough night, turned into a night of luxury for us! A real bed and a shower that we didn’t have to put quarters into was a real win with our group. Until tomorrow!! 

Idaho seriously surprised me! I totally fell in love with Sandpoint. The town center is located on the massive Pend Orielle (pronounced Ponderay) Lake. Its a perfect spot for water sports and sitting on the beach. The town is filled with bike paths and cars are so kind to bikers to almost a fault. And the town is only a short drive from Schweitzer Mountain, the largest ski resort in Idaho and Washington! In the off season, the mountain is covered in well maintained mountain biking trails.  It really is a 4 season town! And our wonderful hosts donated to our cause (we loved their Pride Idaho sign). So I said see you later to Sandpoint and we set off for Bull Lake, MT. We biked through a crafty farmers market and picked up breakfast before we set off. We then winded around the top of the lake (its question mark shaped). The monarch mountains of the Idaho Cabinets arise straight out of the water giving the lake a very majestic feel. I loved riding through the Pond Orielle region....

 Day 10:  Today we took a rest day in Sandpoint, Idaho and stayed at a hosts house using warmshowers. The world was our oyster !!! We decided to sleep in, which felt a bit odd to me since I am used to the sunrise peeking into my tent as my wake up call. When I woke up, Liz had lived a thousand lives already (walked down the road, talked to people on the phone, meditated, had coffee- she’s a morning superwoman!!!) and Kayla was scanning the maps of the Northern Tier Trail. We got to sit outside on the warmshower host’s deck, which was a stunning outdoor space with a hot tub and a little garden waterfall. The hosts were on their morning bike ride which just felt so wholesome. We finally made our way into town on foot for big fat diner breakfast.. where we all ordered virtually the same thing (mine just being the meat version). We walked around the main part of town and ran some errands. When we got back to the house everyone was resting and we set our tents up in the yard to dry...

 Group 2 days 2-3 : Maura  Over the past two days we’ve biked from Rockport to Winthrop, WA, stopping for the night in Diablo. Day 2 was tricky. We thought it was going to be an easy day but were surprised with some major hills on the way to camp. Washington is definitely kicking us into shape quickly! It started to rain at the end so we pedaled quickly to set up our tents and start dinner. A few of us trecked by car (thanks, Laurence!) to find a convenience store nearby and were thrilled to stock up on snacks, check out the candy selection, and pet an adorable polar bear/dog named Cyprus. Fast forward to day 3 - Washington pass. A big day. It is the most gain in elevation we will face over the whole trip! We climbed over 5,400 feet in only 30 miles. It was nearly a constant incline. After our friends in group 1 warned us about the ride, we decided to take it as slow as we needed to and stopped for many snack breaks along the way. We were lucky enough to have bluebird skies an...

Today we said goodbye to Washington and hello today Idaho!! It was a bittersweet goodbye as we felt proud but also relieved to have made it through 4 major passes and an entire state!! What a surreal feeling! And on the same day that our friends were joining us some 300+ miles behind in anacortes (which we were pretty obsessed about). We finished our last few beautiful miles of Washington on a lovely peaceful ride along the  Pend Oreille river, cruising along and enjoying the flat country road while reminiscing about our experience through the first state of our cross country tour. Here’s our review:  Weather:  Keelin: 3.5/10 Liz: 5/10 Kayla: 4.5/10 The first 2 days had really nice weather, although it was a little hot when we were on the main highways. Days 3 and 4 were pretty brutal with all day rain, with day 3 taking the cake for the absolute worst weather day of the trip this far ; we were soaked through our rain clothes and had to layer on all of our clothes to stay...

73 miles from Colville to Usk WA, our longest milage yet! It was actually pretty uneventful biking, so uneventful that we were even falling asleep on the bikes. To keep ourselves entertained, we practiced biking with no hands, we’ve come a long way with our biking abilities.   It feels kind of crazy to bike from 8:30am to 7pm. I try to mostly focus on my surroundings and take in the landscapes were passing through but sometimes I just run out of things to keep my mind occupied. I thought a bit about what it is like to provide medical care in rural towns like these. Yesterday we talked to a family medicine doctor who works in Republic. He loves what he does and who he works with now, but he had a few rough years starting out.  When he worked in the clinic, he felt like an absent father, always charting on days off. Now that he’s a hospitalist, he has better balance. He said obstetrics is the best thing he’s ever done and the best thing he ever stopped doing. He didn’t want to d...

 Day 1 for group 2 is in the books! We started out the day as any big day of biking should start, by frequenting a very fabulous bakery for breakfast and loading up. We then proceeded to dip our back tires in the Pacific, as is tradition, and obviously picked the lowest of tides to do this during, thus our starting point was accompanied by far more seaweed than I think any of us expected;). We were then off the races and began our journey with a LOVELY bike path taking us out of Anacortes and onto route 20. We then spent the day on and off of a gravel bike path and road, and found ourselves about the best damn picnic spot we could have imagined. A stunningly turquoise Skagit river sat infront of breathtaking mountains, all of which seemed perfectly placed in front of the first bench we came across after we decided it was time for lunch. The second half of the day was filled with more gravel bike paths and our first taste of climbing (on roads, not rocks, don't worry parents) of the...

I’ll start you off with a little foreshadowing… no days can be easy for the three of us!!  The morning started off so amazing with scrambled eggs and sourdough pancakes made by our warm shower host in Republic. Such a great experience!!!! The hosts were pharmacists and one of the local doctors came over for breakfast as well. Great conversations ! We hit the road at about 8:30 (a little behind the scheduled programming for the day but hey, we’re being flexible). Our approach to Sherman Pass was much more successful than Washington!! We met up as a group every few miles and kept everyone together and spirits high (the lack of rain also may have helped a little bit haha). We paused at the top for an extended lunch break before descending into Kettle Falls. Not much happening there- we pedaled through the whole town in about 2 miles. A few miles down the road we ended up in Colville where we stopped at the grocery store and picked up some tortellini and pesto because our warm shower h...

Today we would climb pass #3 - Wauconda Pass. Knowing I would be slow, I got a 30 minute head start from Liz and Keelin but this time I had company. We had made friends with a fellow northern tier cyclist, Fisher, a few days prior and camped with him in Omak and Tonasket. Unfortunately he was experiencing pain in his ankle, but that meant that my 5 mi/hr climbing pace was perfect for his recovery. We rode together through range land - dry rolling hills of grass and sage brush. The sun was finally out and was bearing down on us with a fiery intensity, making the climbing that much more exhausting. When we stopped in the shade about 13 miles in keelin and Liz caught up and we cycled the remaining 13 mi to the summit reunited as a group. As we climbed the dry farmland gave way to evergreens, and soon we found ourselves in a forest again, which helped provide some relief from the sun. After a nice lunch break of peanut butter tortillas (or just plain tortillas for Liz) we coasted down the ...

Two things I’ve realized are necessary for a cross country bike trip: flexibility and laughter. For day 5 we planned 67 miles of riding with an afternoon of climbing somehow another pass. Instead we biked maybe 22 miles and walked about 4. And yet, today was still a good day.   That morning, emotions were running high in the Walmart parking lot as we distributed groceries and ate breakfast. Could we do another long, high elevation day? Well we could at least get to Tonnasket and then we’d decide.  So we set off on route 20 and eventually turned onto a side road that all our navigation services told us would be quicker. Turns out you can’t always trust your gps! While the first few miles were beautiful and quiet, things eventually took a turn for the worst. (Though we did pass a donkey sanctuary that made me very happy.) Miles in, the road turned to a gravel public access. And eventually, we got to an intimidating “you are trespassing” sign followed by a gated fence. We were mi...