Safe Havre

It turns out (and we knew this going in) that we are doing this whole trip backwards. Instead of starting out in familiar territory, where the land is relatively flat and we know many people, we flew to Seattle and started there. The weather, animals, and bugs are all foreign and somewhat strange. The first pass we did (Washington Pass) was the single highest climb of our entire trip (and incidentally, the first mountain pass either of us had ever done). And the longest stretch of the whole trip without a know friendly face was the stretch between Seattle and Shelby, MT (2 weeks). By the end of the trip, through Ohio and New York, we are going to have stops every day or two and be cruising through early autumn weather in familiar and fairly level ground.

But for that reason, it was delightful to meet Cindy (a distant relative of Erik (not me, note the "K")), who greeted us with ice cold Powerade, cooked us dinner, washed our clothes, had beds for us to sleep in, made us breakfast, and gave us cherries for the road. That was a huge boost after our terrible day yesterday.

Now we are in Havre, having finished 104 miles today. We are staying in a church that Jason hooked up for us. This is quite important, as it turns out, since the mosquitos are really bad here. I killed at least 50 going to and from dinner, and at one point I could see 6 at one time on my legs. Indoors is good.

Oh, and some folks had requested that we google map so that people can follow along with us, but this is probably too much work for us, since we have a very busy schedule (any time I am not actively doing something, I stop to think of what needs to be done, and there's always something). But the best bet is to look at the Adventure Cycling map page for our trip. This can easily be matched up with google maps.

For fun, here is a picture of a "Used Vehicle Lot" that we passed.