We did not set an alarm to wake up this morning because packing up camp in the dark sucks. Not only is it cold and frustrating, but your chances of leaving something behind are much greater. So waking up naturally when camping can be a good idea and that’s what we chose to do. Still, we woke up at about 5:45 and we both felt pretty well-rested so we got up and we managed to be on the road by about 7:00. We had some (sorry, darling) disgusting peanut butter tortilla roll ups with a blueberries and cheese danish thrown inside for good measure. It felt like swallowing a flavored stick of nutty blueberry glue and felt like a great, big gut bomb. But…it was ingenious! It gave us the fat, protein, and carb calories we needed to climb Lolo Pass. Although, like I’ve said before, these climbs are really no big deal anymore. We just put it in a low gear and you ride up the mountain. It helps if the weather is cooperative, not too hot/windy/wet, but honestly we can climb anything now. So we took off, and I was super pleased in the morning to discover that I still had air in my tires and wouldn’t be fixing a flat again! (Fingers crossed.) When we made the 10 miles to Lolo Springs Resort Campground, we were super happy that we had chosen to stop the night before at Lolo CREEK Campground, a Forest Service campground. Even though it wasn’t fantastic and had been pretty rustic, it was nice enough and it was pretty. The Loll Hot Springs Resort camping sucked and they would’ve had us pitch our tent in the middle of a barren field and charged us a whole bunch of money to do it. Shortly after we passed Lolo Springs Campground we started to climb, and as it turns out it was only about 4 miles of steep climbing. Vanesa knows that I like to attack the climbs, and I know that she likes to put it in an easy gear and wind her way up more comfortably, so she told me to go on ahead, which I did. It turns out that the grade of the pass was not all that bad, and at a distance of only 4 miles it didn’t take me all that long to get up there. And when I arrived and I saw the “Welcome to Idaho” sign, what did I see directly behind it?! A great big bull moose contentedly chomping on grass at the roadside probably about 100 feet from me!!!! This is the first male moose that we’ve seen on this trip, though we did briefly see a mama moose and her baby a few days ago by the road near Wisdom, MT just before sunrise. I was able to snap a picture of the welcome sign with the moose directly behind it, and when you see it, no, it is not Photoshopped in! As I was waiting for Vanesa at the top, three other cyclists came up the other side of the pass and summitted. We all chatted for a bit and I took their pictures at the “Welcome to Montana” sign (yes, the Montana/Idaho border is at the top of Lolo Pass). When Vanesa arrived, they were excited to see that she was carrying a dog, as is the usual reaction, and then we had all the standard conversation about how she does it, how the dog likes it, how do you get the dog to stay in the basket for that many miles/hours each day, etc. We decided it was time to head over the other side so we said goodbye and popped into the Lolo Pass Visitor Center briefly to fill our water bottles before the descent, and I drank about a half of a hot cup of coffee, even though it was fairly hot and already about 11 AM. We proceeded down the other side and it was an amazing 4-5 mile descent, with perfect pavement, no traffic, and views to die for. This is the route that Lewis and Clark took over the Bitterroot Mountains and they would not have made it had Sacajawea not helped them through, so there’s a lot of history and food for thought as you pass through here. On the way down you’ll see a sign that says “Winding road, next 99 miles“ and having ridden through here before, I remember that those 99 miles were without a doubt the most beautiful of my entire 2010 Trans Am journey. I was eagerly awaiting riding this stretch again. Maybe 8 miles down from the top of Lolo Pass we reached Lochsa Lodge where we went inside and had a veggie burger and some nachos shared while our tent groundcover dried on the lawn out front. It turns out Lochsa Lodge has a store where we were able to pick up a few more snacks there for camping this evening (even though we had picked up supplies in the town of Lolo yesterday, having a few more seem like a good idea as you really don’t wanna pass by opportunities to pick up some water and calories when you’re in such a remote country). Lochsa Lodge is beautiful and it’s a trip to sit inside this big lodge just looking around and taking in the westernness of it all, with mountain views, wooden everything, and taxidermied mountain lions and bear skins hanging on the walls. When we got back on the road, it was probably noon or 1:00 and we were continuing downhill along the Lochsa River for the start of those “winding 99 miles” which are all downhill and next to one of the most beautiful rivers I’ve ever seen. However, it didn’t take more than about 5 miles or so for a decent enough headwind to kick up that even though it was super beautiful, and even though it was downhill, the ride started getting somewhat challenging. It was probably a 15 mile per hour headwind but it made us work hard. For me, riding into a headwind can be worse than riding uphill…it’s demoralizing to work hard and make little progress. And when finally pulled into Wilderness Gateway Campground, we had ridden about 50 miles downhill on these gorgeous roads and were ready to stop! We were really excited to see the campground at long last and when we pulled in, We saw four camping loops: A, B, C, and D. Loop A was the closest but B looked like it might be a little closer to the water so we rode over to B, which turned out to have no water access at all. Sites in B were posted as $14/night and I was frustrated that I only had a $20 bill, and there was no camp host on site to give us change. So given that there was no water access in any loop, we rode back to loop A since it was closest to the entrance. Loop A had a gate that had a sign that said “closed to camping, but the gate was wide open to drive through. On the gate were three signs that had reservations with people’s names but given that it was open we rode through and figured that we would just find one of the other sites that was not reserved for one of those three people. I was surprised that on the bulletin board, there was no sign reminding us to store food in bearproof containers or in a campground bear locker, and strangely there was no sign that told us how much a campsite cost. At a sign that pointed to the camp host’s location, that site was empty. So we’d hit the jackpot! There’s no camp host, and there’s no posted fee. We rode around and immediately found a number of sites that didn’t have a reserved sign on them so we picked number three, which was only two sites away from the entrance and was right next to the water spigot, and was relatively close to the bathroom, although there was no bear locker for food storage to be found anywhere in the campground. There was a storm approaching so we hurriedly started getting ready, dividing tasks like we have grown so accustomed to doing on this trip, this time with Vanesa taking care of feeding the dog and getting food ready for us while I started assembling the tent. The site was annoying because there was literally was nowhere to pitch the tent except on the asphalt parking slab. The only other unpaved space in the site was where there was a picnic table and a fire pit but in neither place was there was enough room for a tent. It was strange, though, because it wasn’t marked as an RV site, and it didn’t have any electrical outlets, so where did they expect people to pitch their tents?? Well we didn’t it give that much thought and we just set up our tent on the concrete and then we found some heavy rocks to hold down the edges of the tent and we guyed out the tent across the parking slab to a stake 15 feet away so that we could have the rain fly properly anchored. (The tent is freestanding, but the rainfly is only truly protective if the tent is fully staked down, and that wasn’t possible on asphalt.) We put all of our stuff into the tent that we would need during the night and then, convinced that we had everything in the tent so that if it started raining we could make a mad dash for shelter and not need to exit again, we sat down to eat our dinner. This time dinner was refried beans, Triscuits, and provolone cheese. And as we’re sitting there savoring our gourmet meal, a dude (Ed DiTunno, he later informed us) strolled into our campsite and asked us if we had seen the “Reserved” signs at the entrance. We answered that yes we had, that we had seen that three of the sites were reserved so we picked one that clearly wasn’t, and he then semipolitely informed us that in fact the entire loop A was reserved. And that we weren’t allowed to be there. And then he asked where we had paid. We told him we had been surprised that there was no camp host, and there was no site fee posted on the bulletin board, so we figured that we had stumbled upon a campground that was unattended and we had lucked out and found a freebie for the night. He was clearly unimpressed with our situation or explanation and he again told us that we couldn’t be there, the entire loop was his. What?! Oh no. No! NO! We had just set everything up, which is a fairly big undertaking, and it’s about to storm, soon to be dark, and now we’re being kicked out and we have to find a way to get all of our stuff back on the bike, pedal to the other loop, unpack the bike, and get everything set up before it starts pouring rain or gets dark!? No way. This can’t be happening. He then told us that he had reserved the entire loop because it was his granddaughter’s wedding the next day, and said they had a bunch of family coming in. We congratulated him but and also asked him if it was possible that the guests that arrived later that evening might be able to find another free site, and wondered aloud if it was possible that maybe there wouldn’t be enough people coming that night to warrant us having to leave, especially given that we were about to go to sleep and would be out of there first thing in the morning. He didn’t seem too happy about it but he wasn’t completely disagreeable. Since he was in the first site and he seemed to be the one who had orchestrated the weekend, I asked him if he wouldn’t mind steering guests that arrive later toward other sites first and then if they filled up then we would absolutely pack up and leave ASAP. He said no to that, but he didn’t kick us out. He just walked away and said, if someone comes here later you guys will have to go. We said OK and thanked him profusely. We were just about finished with our dinner when he came walking back into our camp again and this time he wasn’t saying anything about the family, it was about money. He came over and he said that he had paid $500 to reserve the loop for the weekend and so based on his math that site that night was worth $19 and some cents so if we gave him $20 he’d let us stay. We were a little surprised because suddenly it wasn’t about them not having enough room for all of their family and us, or about us invading this family gathering, it was about him needing us to pay so that we didn’t get something for free in an area that HE had paid for. Whatever. We quickly gave the guy the 20 bucks because we didn’t want to get kicked out. As it turns out, it makes a lot of sense that he wanted money. He had mentioned to us that he had worked for the Forest Service for 40 years, so Im sure he’s had his fair share of freeloaders trying to sneak in and get a campsite without paying. The whole interaction was weird though because while we were trying to be kind and polite, he was telling us how much he dislikes bicyclists being on the road because of how much of a safety risk they are to vehicles and how he hates that he has to slow down to avoid hitting cyclists. But then in the next breath he was telling us how he is a bicyclist but he would never ride on Highway 12 because it’s because it’s dangerous and doesn’t have enough of a shoulder. And then when he asked us where we live and we said Oregon, he said “oh, Portland?” When we answered yes, he said something to the effect of “well that place has sure gone downhill in the last 35 years and it’s a shithole now”. So the whole interaction was on the surface polite but there was a mutual disdain just under the surface. He clearly didn’t like us because we’re from Portland and we ride bicycles, and we clearly didn’t like him because he was just being a jerk and telling us that we shouldn’t be allowed on his roads and that we live in a shitty place. He could’ve done it in a much kinder way, but the bottom line is, we got to stay where we were, we didn’t kick get kicked out, and it only cost us 20 bucks. So In that sense, it was worth it. And of course we ended up getting a terrible night of sleep because of his group partying late into the night (no worries, you’re at a wedding weekend!). When we woke up in the morning, I did a quick swing through Loop A just to see how many people were actually camping there. There were only 7 sites occupied out of 28!! He never had a problem with not having enough space for his family; he just didn’t like the fact that he thought that we had snuck in and tried to get something for free when it was just an honest mistake that we ended up there. But not all was bad at Wilderness Gateway Campground! When we had first arrived in the afternoon heat after 70 miles of riding, we walked down and found some river access near the bridge at the entrance to the campground, and we got naked and swam a little bit in the cold but spectacularly beautiful river before we walked up to pitch our tent and make dinner. That was a special moment and memory!