July 9 Day 9

Today we had a perfect weather day, dry with a high around 80! Our ride for today took us from Coeur d' Alene Idaho down to the Clarkston Washington / Lewiston Idaho area (think of the Lewis and Clark trail). We also took a ride around a 180 mile loop on the Nez Perce Indian reservation.

As we headed out of Coeur d' Alene in the morning, we passed a pretty good size lake (lake Coeur d'Alene of course). The lake is about 25 miles long, and ranges from 1 to 3 miles in width. The boaters were out enjoying the great weather.

In the northern portion of Idaho the scenery was pretty much what I expected. We passed a ton of farms, and many of the farmers were out either cutting down or bailing hay. Many farms had huge piles of bailed hay built up along the roadside. In some locations, tractor trailers were loading up the bails and hauling them off.

We also encountered a large number of logging trucks and passed a few lumber mills. The mill shown below had huge stacks of 30 to 40 foot straight pine logs. It was amazing how much wood they had stacked ready to be processed. Reminded me of watching "American Loggers" on the Discovery channel.

Idaho also seems to have a large number of upscale used car lots. We almost swung into this one to take a look at that fine red and white pickup near the front. Or is that primer and white?

We passed through the town of Moscow Idaho, home of the University of Idaho. Perhaps this is where the future "spud-ologists" of America will get their education?

South of Moscow, the scenery changed to something I did not expect, mountains and hills. Not sure why, but I always thought of Idaho as being similar to Kansas, flat farmland. Here is a shot as we dropped down into Lewiston.

Once in Lewiston, we checked into our hotel, and moved our luggage from the trailer to our room. We headed out for a quick lunch, and then took off for another 180 mile ride through the Nez Perce Indian reservation. The ride included about 80 miles of Rt 12, from Lewiston to Kooskia, which is a part of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. This road runs right along the Clearwater River. You can see the hilly terrain in the photo below.

Here, you get a good view of the Clearwater River running alongside the road. This was a 60 mph road with large sweeping turns, great scenery, and little traffic, a perfect road for bike travel !

In some areas, the terrain was rather rocky. Again, different than I expected.

The river was running pretty good, and the traffic was extremely light in this area.

Thankfully, our trailer was right behind us the whole way, just like it should be. As I told you before, Lennie sometimes get bored and goes nuts with the camera, this was an over the head snap and hope shot.

Oh crap!!! About 80 miles into the 180 mile loop, we met this swell gentleman on the side of the road!! Just before pulling up to him, we passed a sign indicating "Road Work, next 7 miles". We asked him a few questions about the area, and then he informed us that they are having issues with their pilot trucks and we may have to wait up to 45 minutes to pass through !!!

We actually talked about turning around and heading back the same way we came. We decided to wait a while and within 15 minutes this guy showed up. We started the bike back up and followed as instructed.

You guessed it, they were doing a little chip-n-seal job. NOT AGAIN !!!!

You can see in the photo below, how a huge portion of this crap sticks to your tires rather than the road!!! It then gets flung all over you, your bike, etc...

Finally, after 7 miles of having this stuff bounce off of the bike and Lennie and I, we reached the end of the construction zone. We pulled into a gas station to top off, and pluck the tar covered stones from our trailer and bike.

Back on the road, life is good again, and we ramp our speed back up into the 50-60 range, just in time to see this fellow in our windshield! See him hopping over the barb wire fence?

Actually, this encounter was not that close, but when travelling at speed, these guys always worry me. Deer like this are one thing I worry about most on the bike. Sure, other drivers are always a hazard, pulling out from a side street in front of you, turning left into your path, but at least you can learn to drive defensively and lessen the chance of a bad encounter. With animals, especially when you are travelling down a high speed, tree lined road, they can just appear, giving you very little time to react.

Oh well, enough dwelling on the bad, the roads and scenery out here are amazing, and Lennie and I are delighted to be fortunate enough to travel them.

Tomorrow we will travel through Washington state, and the Hell's Canyon area of Oregon, ending the day in McCall Idaho.

Our stats for today indicate that we covered 289 miles, bringing our trip total to 3104 miles. It took us about 7.5 hours, including gas and food stops to complete our ride today. Below is a map of our route from today.