DAY 9 - WHITEFISH TO BIGFORK

After leaving the campsite about 9:30 we headed back into our local ‘Montana Coffee Traders’ for a coffee & to use there free Internet (very handy) to upload the photo’s you have hopefully all viewed now?
At 11am we headed out of town - just as we started it PERSISTED down with rain & this is what it was like for the rest of the day - Hard Rain!
The riding today was all sealed backcountry roads passing lots of ‘Ranches’ so it made for good scenery viewing, a change from being in trees all day.
After arriving at Bigfork we set up camp @ what would have been the nicest campground yet, the rain had stopped, so we did some washing quickly & decided to walk into town to check it out.
After a 5 min walk to town - you guessed it - It rained - not just any kind of rain - it Teamed down !!!! (so much for the washing we left out to dry - when will we learn!)
We checked out a few galleries as Bigfork is quite a arty town , then just gave up & headed for the nearest pub to wait out the rain.
We had just settled with our beers when we got approached by a lovely 74yr old man called Ray - he heard Scott ordering the beers & recognised the accent… this was enough for him to come on over & introduce himself - little did we know at that point the was affectionately know as ALL - DAY - RAY!
Any way he was lovely & keep us entertained for about 2 hours with his stories of his life. 3 pints later the rain was still going & we had not eaten so were starting to feel rather merry.
We were then joined by another Bigfork local called Art. Art proceeded to tell us some more stories & buy us some more beers , we were introduced to Bigforks only Samoan resident (who by the way played in the NFL), everyone was so very friendly & did not want us to leave - but to stay & listen the ‘Boot Stomppin’ band they had playing..
Scott finally bought food & we stayed at the pub till 10:30pm when we finally managed to extract ourselves. By the way it had not stopped raining so we had a very wet walk back to the camp.
Art was the local beer rep, representing Scott’s new favourite beer ‘Fat Tyre’ amber ale.
And we would like to thank Ray, Art & the only resident Samoan (sorry forgot your name?) for there fantastic hospitality..
We slept well that night!

DISTANCE: 76.2km
AVERAGE: 18.4km
RIDE TIME: 4.08hrs
ASCEND: 340mtrs