This morning we drove to the Hiawatha Rail to Trail bike trail. It is 100 miles west of Missoula just off interstate route 90 on the border of Montana and Idaho. All of the other pictures are located in the Idaho album because once you are through the first tunnel you are in Idaho even though the trail starts in Montana. It cost $9.00 to ride the trail and $9.00 to ride the shuttle bus back up to your car. Actually they take you to the west side of the first tunnel and you have to go back through it again to get to your car. The trail is 15 miles long. All down hill, thank goodness. You go through 11 tunnels and over 9 trestles. The first tunnel is 2 miles long and pitch black as are some of the other tunnels. The rules for the ride are that you must wear a helmet and your bike must have a light. The weather was great for the ride it was in the mid seventies. The tunnels are much cooler. The first one is in the mid thirties and wet and damp with water dripping on you at times. They do have travel marshals on the trail to check for any problems.
This is the beginning of the trail in Montana. The first tunnel is right behind us. At our age I should have know better. Even with the bike light and the one on my head as soon as we hit the dark I couldn't see a thing. Instead of stopping until my eyes got accustom to the dark I kept trying to push on. The tunnel has drainage's on each side with water running in them. You can hear the water dripping all over the place. It didn't take me long to lose my balance and ended up against the wall and in the drainage. Fortunately I only tore my good Pendleton wool shirt and scraped my little finger and my arm just below my elbow.
This is just on the other side of the tunnel. So you can see I wasn't hurt bad, just my pride. Some times it's tough getting old and like they say getting old is not for the young.
This is one of the views from the trail. The trail you see below is part of our trail that we will get to later.
A view of one of the many trestles we crossed.
This trestle is called the Turkey Creek trestle and is 146 feet high and 494 feet long. The views down in the valley from these are great. You are at the top of all the trees. Peggy got to see the start of the cones on the spruce for the first time since they are at the very top of the trees, along with the western white pine and other pines, Balsam fir and western hemlock. Looking at these tall trees from the top certainly gives you a different perspective.
We found these Lilacs right along the trail, notice there are both lilac and white ones.
Lilacs are one of my favorite flowers and these smelled wonderful.
This is another flower we found, it's called Hound's-tongue. We also saw these flowers at the National Bison Range. The worst part of the trip was the ride back to the top in an old school bus. The road was a curvy, dirt and a narrow road. The bus driver had to keep radioing to tell the other buses where he was so that we didn't meet one at the wrong place. Half way up we met a bus that was on it's way down but had been waiting on us at a place where he could pull over. Two things I learned was that if I ever ride a trail with long tunnels like this in the future I will have a much better light on my bike and secondly to walk in the first part until my eyes got accustom to the dark. After the bus dropped us off and we had to go back through the 2 mile tunnel to get to the car, we walked our bikes in the tunnel for quite a way before we started to ride. That helped a great deal because by then our eyes had adjusted to the dark and we could actually see fairly well. In spite of the mishap we really enjoyed the ride. The scenery was beautiful and the weather could not have been better. We did get through just in time. Just as I finished loading the bikes on to the car it started to rain. It rained half of the way back to Missoula then it stopped. Missoula had not had any rain. We are going to stay in Missoula one more day so I can get a prescription filled at a Walgreen. Then Monday we are going to Glacier National Park. 
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