A Beautiful Day for Sweeping Chokecherries and Biking

It's amazing how close to home (and without even a real event) you can have adventure.  It was a day in the 70s among hot ones, so we biked down Lincoln Hills and up Rattlesnake Drive, where a doe and fawn ran across the road in front of us and a car passing us.  The driver didn't slow at all so maybe didn't see how near the car came to hitting the fawn, but I know how close I came to rear-ending Eric who saw the imminence and suddenly stopped.  We both stood a while beside the road looking at nothing--since nothing had happened--and starting to breathe. 

The Golden Spike for the Bitterroot Trail

 





The missing Missoula-to-Lolo segment of the 50-mile Missoula-to-Hamilton Bitterroot Trail opened yesterday.  








 

 
While the path runs disconcertingly close to zooming cars on highway 93, and the noise of those cars drowns out cyclists' conversation, at least bikes now have some of their own space on this dangerous stretch.  

















And the valley is worth experiencing at 10 miles per hour.  










We joined hundreds of riders grinning their way from Silver Park in Missoula to Travelers' Rest State Park for a ribbon cutting ceremony.  I have never seen so many bikes in one place.

Some of the speakers were those who worked hard for decades to make this trail possible, and

Tony Incashola blessed the old place and new trail in Salish and commemorated the day as the anniversary of the unfortunate 1855 Hellgate Treaty that led to the 1859 removal of the Salish from their home in the Bitterroot Valley. 

 

A charming part of the celebration was the chorus from Toronto in town for the International Choral Festival that not only sang before the speeches but also stood at the balloon gate and sang the riders north afterward.  

Heading north, the first riders, with cardboard horse heads on their bikes, represented Corps of Discovery members who camped at Travelers' Rest in 1805 and 1806.  Right behind them rode bikers from the 1976 Transcontinental Bikecentennial, gathered for a 40th anniversary reunion.  







We followed, cheered by some very fresh pavement and the community of bike shorts, fraternité, egalité, liberté, and joie de vivre.