Day 12 - Lincoln MT to Missoula MT

Ave 11.3 miles an hour
Dist 79.4 miles
Time 7 hours
Vertical feet 1510 ft

Total: 777 miles

This is it for the ride. We went a long way, but ran into some trouble in Lincoln which made us a little uncomfortable - so, we pedaled back to Missoula and called it a day.

This is the summary I sent to Greg from Adventure Cycling:
We came in through town and stopped at the convenience store and a resturant before setting up camp in the campground that was in town. We asked the convenience store clerk about camping and he said it was the only place that he knew of. We set the tent and went to sleep to be awoken at 3AM by a car inches from the tent with it's headlights on blasting the horn. That was kind of surprising to say the least. It drove away and Jesse got out of the tent at this point and was putting on his shoes when the truck came by again and threw a lit bundle of firecrackers at the tent (which was the largest bundle of firecrackers I've ever seen - like maybe a pound - and which didn't go off thankfully and we didn't find until morning because it had actually rolled underneath the front of the tent - disastrous for the tent if it had gone off). They drove away once again and I got out of the tent and we went over to the bathroom to decide what to do. Our cellphones didn't work and we just had our bikes so we were kind of stuck. We waited for a while and watched as now the truck was joined by a car and they drove by the tent again and again firing smaller fireworks off at it. The actions were annoying but we were worried about the motivation. Did they just pick a random tent? Was it a race issue, or maybe because we were two guys sleeping in the same tent? The campground had a lot of campers, tents and RVs, and it was strange that they had singled out our tent. We heard a car door open, and then shut. I had left the rainfly open when I left and they may have now realized we weren't in the tent. We heard footsteps go around the campground for a while and now we were getting pretty on edge. Someone walked to the bathroom and went inside - we said hello, he was carrying a small firework and was surprised - "you guys smokin?" - "no, you need a light?" - "no" - and we left. We went now and banged on a couple of RVs to tell them what was going on - one person woke up and told us to talk to the camphost at the front of the campground. We hid underneath an RV at the front of the campground as the cars came by again. They drove around for a bit cussing some more and then they spotted us and now we were kind of freaking out. As it turns out there is no camp host at this campground, but the lady whose RV we banged on was very nice and offered to drive us into town to call the sheriff. It was a very small town and everything was closed and we had to wake up a motel owner to use a phone. They said there were no sheriffs in the area but they would send one there. The motel had no open rooms but they lady who drove us to town offered for us to sleep on the floor of her RV, which we would do. When the sheriff arrived we told him the story and he thought we were asking for trouble by staying at campgrounds near the 4th of July (it was June 30th). Anyway, he was right, it was getting near the 4th and roads would be getting more crowded. Jesse said he would have a hard time sleeping in the tent the next night, and we were getting tired and sore anyway so we decided to stop. When we set out on the trip we decided we would go until the trip wasn't fun anymore, and this at least temporarily put it over the edge. Anyway, we had a good time and it's not like we have nothing else to do now. I've been learning PHP and MySQL server side web page languages in Truckee, CA and will be going back to Boston on the 25th to try my hand at building something like a steam engine and Jesse has been/will be visiting people in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Arizona, Orlando and then back to Boston.