Day 9 - Going to the Sun Road

I dropped them off at the "12 miles to go" spot. It was cold and raining. Their comments and the photos tell the story.  Although the cycling is the main event - driving a car up the "Going to the Sun Road" (twice) was an adventure I will never forget.  The panoramic views, water falls, sharp curves, steep cliffs and the narrowest road I have ever driven on.   A highlight of this trip for me!
As for the micro-brew - the beer of the day was Sierra Nevada Torpedo (a double IPA) in a 16 ounce Ball can!  The guys had to have a "Going to the Sun IPA" (Whitefish Brewery) - did not live up to its namesake.

Comments from Tom:  I'm still trying to figure out that if we were "going to the sun" why was it so cold, foggy, rainy, and windy.  The climb was tolerable at a constant 6 percent for 12 miles.  The weather was not so good.  It rained the whole time, and at one point I could see the top with 3 miles to go, and next minute I couldn't see 50 feet.  As Patty said, the road was crooked, barely two lanes, with thousand foot cliffs right over the 3 foot rock barriers.  At one point there had been a small fresh avalanche, complete with basketball sized rocks. 

After getting to the Logan Pass visitor center, and experiencing the 40 mph wind gusts, continued rain and 38 degree temperatures, we decided to make today a kind of unplanned rest day.  Riding our bikes down a windy, wet, narrow, twisty road that we've never seen before sounded like a bad idea so we rode with our super support team, aka Patty, down to St. Marys and eventually to East Glacier Park.

The terrain has already changed from the coniferous forests we've been in since we left Anacortes.  It's starting to look like eastern Colorado, and we're looking forward to some warmer weather.

Comments from Jerry:  We lucked out on several accounts today, first we guessed right on the weather (rain today) and decided it was better to ride up the mtn in the rain.  By shear luck we got to the gate at Glacier for the big ride exactly when the gate opened at 8 am without any preplanning.  (We had to summit by 11am or they boot you off the route).  What really helped was Linda and Jerry ,our hosts at their house (B&B) getting up at the crack of dawn to give us a real Montana breakfast with fruit, scrambled eggs, toast and fresh bacon from their friend's custom pork butcher shop down the road.  Tom and I were psyched and raring to go despite the rain.  It was actually fun except for the two 20 min sessions standing in the rain waiting for construction and oncoming traffic to clear the one lane road!  Glad we saw how beautiful it was the day before!  Up on top the wind got up to gusts of 60 mph and it was about 38- 40 degrees so we passed on riding down as Tom said.  Enjoyed seeing the old Glacier Park Hotel which was the biggest of the grand hotels in the national parks that I had ever seen.  We are hoping for tailwinds tomorrow because this afternoon had horrible winds (wind advisories).