Coeur D'Alene ID - Missoula MT
6/21/24 - 6/23/24
Miles Traveled 180
Trip Total 5830
Travel Time 3:20
States visited: FL, GA, AL, MS, LA, TX, NM, AZ, UT, NV, CA, OR, WA, ID, Montana
Another easy beautiful ride through the mountains, this time through Idaho and Montana. Again we were on I90 for most of the ride. I wish the road departments in the rest of the country would come see what condition the interstates should be in. There were a couple of sections where they were redoing the highway, not resurfacing it, they dug the entire road up and were replacing it.
We are actually staying in and Campground right outside of Missoula. All of the campgrounds in town were fully booked for the weekend. While some of the reviews complained about the owner and how rude she was, we had no problems at all. Turah RV parked turned out to be a great campground. The sites were a little narrow but level with grass between the sites with a picnic table and a great firepit.
Saturday we took the bikes and explored the riverfront in Missoula. What a difference between Spokane and Missoula. While it looked great at first, as soon as we got on the trail we saw a farmers market across the river, and made our way to it. It was a great farmers market, fresh produce, local farm raised beef, and local bakeries. That seemed to be the highlight of the trail, as we left the farmers market we quickly found the homeless camp. There was a large section of the river lined with tents and makeshift shelters, we quickly turned around. There were a couple of sections where people were sunbathing and swimming, there was even a bridge that the kids were jumping off. The biggest use of the river seemed to be kayakers, and people in tubes. This ride was only eight miles, and also included a stop for lunch.
Sunday we took a tour of the Smoke Jumpers Visitor's Center. There are nine Smoke Jumper Bases in the US. They are all located in the Western part of the country near large roadless wildlands with no other ways to reach a fire. Missoula has about 70 of the nations 400 Smoke Jumpers and most of them are seasonal employees. It is very difficult to become a Smoke Jumper, and most candidates have over ten years experience in forest fire fighting. This year there were 12 openings and over 300 people applied. In addition to the small museum the tour took us through all of their facilites.
We ended our time in Missoula with a campfire roasting marshmallows.
Leaving Missoula we will continue on I90 heading to Boseman MT.
