Tonight we sleep in a Jail. It costs $5, on the honor system, and has two rope strung beds. The little town of Ovando has really taken to setting up touring cyclists well. It’s really cool to see.
Besides the divide route, the Lewis and Clark road touring route comes through here. There’s a superfan of Tour Divide that lives here and operates a shop. We hope to meet him/her tomorrow morning.
It was a perfectly pleasant spin from Lincoln over here this afternoon. So straightforward to have open roads and know terrain ahead. Montana has had very few miles of graded roads and lots of trail. Dave Harris coined the term “jumbletrack” and I think that nails the description of what the CDT is, quite nicely.
We don’t have any more jumbletrack to ride, but we are aiming to ride some prime singletrack — the Alpine #7 trail. I don’t have a GPX file or much solid beta, but have heard good things.
But that’s not tomorrow’s ride. Tomorrow we’ll hit Richmond hill and many quiet backroads. From here north really is some of the best miles of the divide route, and we’re both looking forward to riding them at a relaxed pace.
Pinball Wizard!
Lincoln and Ovando are lovely little towns. This far north the character of Montana definitely changes. People are talkng to us more. People have even stopped and asked if we needed anything. Friendly folks at Trixi’s bar/restaurant. I like it up here.
We still don’t have a solid plan for Glacier and reaching the northern terminus of the CDT. I plan to ask the park for permission to carry bikes on trails, but I doubt we will receive it, and we may not exercise that option anyway. The default plan is to road ride into Canada and hike backwards to the terminus, and really, that’s a fine plan since it will be all new terrain to us, and the “Going to the Sun” road is supposed to be spectacular.
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