We left Lake Mary Ronan fairly early and drove toward St. Regis where we found our way up a gravel road to the parking lot for the biking trail called Hiawatha. This is a rails-to-trails route that was built by the Minneapolis Railroad across the northwestern USA from Chicago to Tacoma, WA. At the Montana and Idaho border the tracks went through the Bitterroot Mountains. In order to go through these steep mountains, they built the track on a 1.7% grade which meant they had to build numerous tunnels and high trestles. The track was abandoned in the 1970's.
Today 15 miles of that track is for biking with another 30 miles to be added. The portion we rode on goes down hill for 15 miles into Idaho and then if you want you can ride a shuttle bus back up the hill to your car. We chose to ride our bikes back up so we only rode 12.5 miles down. The trail starts at the longest tunnel on the route at 1.7 miles long. Everyone is required to have headlights as there are NO light in any of the tunnels. That first tunnel was black, cold and wet! It took some getting used to and wishing we had worn jackets even though it was 90° today. We rode through 7 more tunnels from 300 feet long to 1500 feet and across 6 high trestles. A couple of the trestles were over 200 feet tall. It was a great ride even if it was up hill all the way back. It was also a very popular trail with lots of families with small children.
Tonight we are camped in a National Forest campground. Our RV threw us a water balloon today! A hose from the water pump came loose and spouted water into one of the compartments. Its a good thing that John is such a handy man. He canabalized a clamp from another hose on to the one we needed and figured out how to temporarily close off that other hose. Now we have to find a hardware store. Luckily, nothing in that compartment was damaged by water.
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