Polebridge to Whitefish, MT

BETH writes of June 15th: We won't see Mom or Ann tonight. We are on our own. Day three was the best so far. Jean and I rode from Polebridge to Whitefish a total of 44 miles. We had a wonderful breakfast at the Polebridge Mecantile and tried to go down the road for a shower. Unfortunitly, the showers were $7, so we decided that we could survive without one. We got a shuttle up to where we had left the ride and started a 10 mile climb to Red Meadow Lake. WOW!! As we climbed we could look down into the valley and see where we had come from and in the distance was the white capped Rockies. When we reached Red Meadow Lake there was a Bald Eagle soaring over the lake and the nearby hill side. There was snow on both sides of the road and you could tell that a few days before the road may not have been passable. We then had a 25 mile down hill - seriously awesome! Those 25 miles went by VERY fast! Up to that point Jean and I had made a few observations: Grizzly Bear scat is huge and there are three colors - Green=fresh-ride harder, Black=within a day-keep your eyes and ears pealed, Brown=no worries; second is in this beautiful landscape humans still show their presence - most of the 25 miles was through logging roads and we saw fresh logging operations and some that the forest had already been growing back. It was neat to see succession at its finest. When we reached Whitefish we were back in civilization - cars and HUGE houses on Whitefish Lake. We stayed the night at Whitefish State Park with nice showers and a railroad track within 500 ft of the site.