Today is Sunday - must mean heat stroke!!

Camped overnight in a wooded area attached to a RV park, nice and quiet and lovely scenery comprising the Rockies, things could not be better. Awoke in middle of the night and Boy, was I cold. Sleeping bag comfort zone is listed at 30 degrees F, I spoke to a couple in the morning and the old guy said that the temperature in his RV was 33 degrees at 2am, so he had to put on the heater, Christ knows what it dropped to in the tent around 4am bus as there is still snow not that much higher I guess it would be below freezing!!!!

Awoke to beautiful blue sky's and was on the road early to go to the western entrance to the park in order to do what I could of the Road to the Sun. Went via a lookout called Goat Lick, this is a place the other side of a river where the Mountain Goats come to lick the minerals from the rock. When I got there, there was a number of creamy white goats already on the sheer rock face including a number with very young kids that were bounding up and down over the sheer drop into the icy river.

Anyhow got to the Glacier Park again and decided I was not going to risk my bike up the Road to the Sun as there was a load of road works up there, together with a 3 mile stretch of gravel, so I decided to pay to take a red tour bus. These buses have been operating in the park since the 1930's and the one I was in was a re built one from 1937. They have been re-built by ford and operate on a mix of propane gas and diesel so are pretty good for the environment. The buses seat 12 people in rows of 3, and have a full length canvas roof which was rolled back in order for us to take in the scenery.

The trip lasts 3 1/2 hrs and cost $40.00, a little over 20 pounds, not bad value.

Well, the scenery was superb with plenty of stops for photo shooting. We climbed well up into the Rockies and got to a point about 2 miles before the pass summit. The rest was still closed as they were still repairing the road after the spring snows and still clearing up some of the snow, remember this is the end of June.

We passed great gullies still full of snow and some lovely waterfalls where the snow is melting, including an area called the Weeping Wall where waterfalls fall onto the road for an length of about 200mts, as you can imagine, we got pretty wet in an open top bus.

By the time we got back down to the car park we had been sitting in full sun for about 4 hrs and I had a pretty bad headache even though I had been drinking plenty of fluid and had had a hat on.

I guess I probably had a touch of sunstroke (makes a change from rust eh!)

So I made today a short trip (77miles) and booked into a hotel early afternoon so that I could have some tablets and get a snooze, and very welcome it was.

Today I have left Montana (North West Montana is very pretty with big hills/mountains and rolling woodland, plenty different from the eastern side which was flat) and I am now crossing the 75miles of Idaho before I fetch up in Washington State tomorrow. I will be stopping at Sandpoint tonight , and tomorrow will pass through Spokane (where I hope to get a telephone signal for a bit) and tomorrow night I will camp at the Grand Coulee Dam, where each night they put a Lazer show onto the dam wall - should be good. The day after that I should make the outskirts of Seattle where I intend to hole up for a few days and check out the city and the Boeing factory so should enjoy myself. I will also be Seattle for the July 4th celebrations.