Bigfork man pedals from Montana to Florida

Rumble strips and gravel.

Sometimes they made for a rocky ride, but more often than not they drove 68-year-old Chris Hagar to pedal in the lane of traffic rather than on the shoulder.

While occasionally he would get a rude honk or a scream out the window of a passing vehicle, usually the response was a gentler, muted, slow swerve of respect.

And every day he biked, one of the vehicles that went around him was his wife Francine hauling a fifth-wheel camper.

“It’s a whole different experience going across the U.S. in 60-mile increments,” Francine said. “It’s quite an education.”

The Bigfork residents left their home for life on the road Sept. 10. Their mission was for Chris to complete a cross-country bike ride to Florida with Francine driving the support vehicle.

This isn’t the first time the Hagars have been on a trip like this. The last one was in the 1980s. Chris and his son biked from Montana to the Washington coast. Francine and her daughter drove the support vehicle. Since then, Chris has wanted to complete the journey by biking to the east coast.

“It was one of the things I wanted do,” Chris said.

So he bought a new bike, trained for the month of August and the Hagars set out.

They arrived at his brothers house in Daytona Beach on Dec. 8, 3700 miles later.

Francine and Chris are from Florida. They’ve lived in Montana off and on since the late 1960s. The trip from Bigfork to Florida is something they’ve done together and with their children many times. But this time was different.

Rather than just a few days in a car, it was three months on the road.

Rather than hundreds of miles a day, it was more like 60. Sometimes less, sometimes more.

And rather than a straight shot, they took their time. The Hwy. 2 Highline was the first leg of their trip, then they headed southeast. Through North Dakota, South Dakota and finally they hit the Mississippi, which they meandered over and followed south. They took the semi-truck free Natchez Trail Parkway 444 miles from Tennessee to Mississippi. Once they reached the gulf coast, they followed it into Florida.

They camped in the fifth-wheel at night. Chris would get up before the sun-rose and get on the road as soon as it was light enough to ride safely. Francine would take her time and eventually pack up and get on the road.

All-in-all Chris thinks it was 60 days of bike riding with breaks every week or so.

They stopped and visited museums like the one in Malta, went to festivals like a heritage seed festival in Natchez, Miss., visited their daughter in Chicago and camped, pedaled and drove. Occasionally, they got into the trouble that makes an adventure real.

Francine hit a trash container at a Cutbank campground just three days into the trip and destroyed one of the braces for their trailer awning. Chris was already riding. She found a car-dealer willing to help her out. The dealer didn’t charge her for the services.

“It was really heartwarming,” Francine said. “It’s typical small-town America.”

And a typical thing to see once you leave home ground. From pedaling to pumping up flat tires in North Dakota, and a bee-sting that led to a hospital visit, the Hagars had more than one misadventure and met many more small-town Americans scattered along their chosen route.

“I would say we had a wonderful trip,” Francine said.