Glacier National Park - Montana
July 23 - July 28, 2000


Day 1: Alberta Visitor Center to Lake McDonald Lodge (11 miles)
Day 2: Lake McDonald Lodge to Many Glacier Hotel (60 miles)
Day 3: Many Glacier Hotel to Prince of Wales Hotel [Waterton] (50 miles)
Day 4: Rest day (perhaps because of tomorrow, which is...)
Day 5: Prince of Wales Hotel to Glacier Park Lodge [East Glacier] (77 miles)
Day 6: Glacier Park Lodge to West Glacier (56 miles)
Day 0

A walk to Downtown Whitefish.
The ski slopes as viewed from Whitefish, Montana.




Day 1

Finally, we are on our way. This is a brief stop at Apgar Village before we are allowed to embark on the Going-to-the-Sun road which restricts bikes between the hours of 11am and 4pm. It's now about 3:30.
Day 2


There is a mountain ahead disguised as a wall. You can see the road along the mountain (although not too clearly here) as it inclines upward to the right. Yes, we rode up that hill.







We're past "the loop" but it just keeps going up and up and up. To make matters worse, I stopped frequently to take pictures like this. So much for keeping up a good pace.
Sadly, there should be a photo of me standing in front of the Logan Pass sign which indicates the elevation of 6680 feet, but my volunteer camera operator didn't press the shutter button down all the way.




Bear grass.
This grass shoots up a flowering ball only once every seven years. Next time you'll be able to see this in person will be in 2007.





Day 3

View from behind Many Glacier Hotel.








Finally, I was able to get a group photo! At least a partial one, anyway. Here we have Kathy, Neal, Tim, Lauren, Pam, Mike, Ruth, Gary, and finally Bob (with the poor posture).
The photo was taken by Apollo.


[unknown flower]
I only had seconds to stop to take this picture before the flies caught up with me.
Along this stretch of highway, the guard rails are painted green, and in the hot temperatures, they make an eerie creaking sound as they expand. This is certainly something you can't experience by car and it's something I can't show you here.


"Where the mountains meet the prairies." This was a nice climb up to this viewpoint. Now it's all downhill to the Prince of Wales Hotel.
Photo taken by Alexa.

Day 4 - Rest Day

Hike to Kootenai Lake
This may look like a real moose, but it's only half a moose. It's left antler seems to be missing. Maybe this is one of those half-male/half-female moose we've been hearing about.




Upper Waterton Lake
This is coming back from our hike to Kootenai Lake which is in the U.S. We're now back into Canada and no ID is required!
Day 5

Climbing back up the hill out of Waterton Lakes National Park and heading back to the US Border. There were some interesting fluffy clouds in the sky all day today.



Here's David. His comment that I'll never forget was "Don't waste a picture on me!".








Day 6

Glacier Park Lodge.

The big group photo.
Robert (me), Gary, Joan, Ruth, Mike, Tim, Pam, Lauren, David, (up to) Anna, Patty, (back down to) Alexa, Kathy, Neal, Barbie and Tom.

The only photo of me with the Backroads Cannondale bike. My camera took up a good portion of the space in that red handlebar bag.
Photo taken by Pam.










...and last, but certainly not least, here's Kathy followed by the day's sweeper, Barbie.
Thanks to all of you for helping to make this a great trip!

Finally, one last look at the Glacier Park International Airport before going back home.
Alexa & Barbie - you were great. Thanks for the great trip.
For Henry.

This phlog is dedicated to the Mayer family in memory of Henry Mayer who was on our trip with his wife Betsy. On the Going-to-the-Sun Road as we climbed towards Logan Pass at 6680 feet, Henry suffered a heart attack.
Many of us were ahead of Henry as we wanted to get the big climb behind us, but news was trickling in from drivers who were passing us that there was a cyclist behind us who had a heart attack. This explained the numerous sirens you could hear in the distance. I just assumed that it was a cyclist from another group since there were numerous other groups and independent cyclists on our route. As more news trickled in, I heard that a Backroads vehicle was involved at the scene. Again, I just assumed that our leaders were just there to assist another cyclist, but the sad truth was revealed when one of our leaders, Alexa, stopped to inform me that it was Henry who had the heart attack and that he died immediately at the scene.

I was sitting next to him at the breakfast table that morning. He was joking how he would listen in on the phone conversations with Betsy (an M.D. at Kaiser in Oakland) and her patients and try to figure out what the patient's afflictions were. At times, he said he would answer the phone and offer his advice when Betsy wasn't around. Ironically, he indicated concern about the amount of cholesteral offered at the breakfast buffets at the lodges we were staying at. Of course, we just laughed it off and said it won't make much of a difference the next few days while we are riding 60 miles a day. After that, we loaded up our bikes and headed out. I never saw him again after that morning.
The newspaper article is from The Daily Inter Lake from Kalispell, Montana, vol. 93, no. 105, dated Friday, July 28, 2000. The photo was taken from the Library of Congress web page https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9812/cfb.html.