Milwaukee & Kim Williams Trails -- Missoula, MT

This is Part 2 of an 8-part blog series chronicaling a 7-day road trip, during which we were able to achieve riding our bikes in 8 different states toward our goal of riding in all 50 states. 

Links to all posts:

Day 1: South Dakota

Day 2: Montana

Day 3: Idaho

Day 4: Washington and Oregon

Day 5: Utah

Day 6: Wyoming and Colorado

Day 7: No rides or posts, just finished driving the rest of the way home. 

The Grand Adventure continues

Day 2:

We left Spearfish, SD just after 7:00 a.m., destination Missoula, Montana.

We took I-90 into Wyoming.

Saw the aftermath of more than one forest fire.

Crossed the Continental Divide

Saw plenty of mountains and killed countless bugs

Tried and pretty much failed to get a picture of the "Welcome to Montana" sign as we blew by at 85 mph.

We finally rolled into Missoula, Montana just before 5:00 p.m. and headed toward the "Carousel for Missoula" where we planned to park to access the trail we intended to ride.

This is in downtown Missoula and there was quite a bit of traffic getting down there.

It proclaims itself a bicycle friendly city and judging by the large numbers of cyclists we encountered during our ride in Missoula, I would concur.

We got to the Carousel parking lot just as they were closing the doors on the carousel for the evening and the parking became free at that time. Good for us!

The trail travels along the Clark Fork River.

There is a large covered pavilion in the downtown area alongside the trail......

..... colorful bike racks ......

....... some neat art ......

and some scary art.

We rode past a football team practicing.

and down to the University of Montana. Pedestrian and bicycle traffic was extremely heavy.

This picture is on the edge of the university campus and there was just a steady stream of people moving past while we took this picture with our camera timer.



We're not exactly sure what all trails we ended up on.  We think the one we started out on from the carousel parking lot was the Kim Williams Trail.  At one point we ventured off into a more residential area, still on a paved bike trail, and at that point we encountered this sign, so I guess we were then on a different trail.

But we were glad we did, as we found some great quirky finds on this part of our ride. There was this RV that we expected to see cousin Eddie emerge from.......



This neat community garden tucked in the square of surrounding apartment buildings.....



 and this uber awesome VW bus .....



with The. Best. Bumper. Sticker. Ever.



We really enjoyed our evening bike ride in this artsy college town.



We rode until the sun went down



and saw a beautiful sunset reflected off the Clark Fork River.



then refueled with chips and guacamole and a shared steak fajita burrito at Qdoba.



Thanks for the memories, Missoula.  Montana bike ride....... check!

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Check out the short video of our ride.