We always find it tough getting going again after a rest day, and this morning was no exception. We eventually rolled out of Sandpoint around 10.45am for our 86-mile jaunt through Idaho to Thompson Falls, Montana. How did we get through Idaho so quickly? We’re going to explain this and give a very quick route recap to bring our followers up to date with our recent movements, and where we are going next.
So, after we came to the end of the Pacific Coast, on the Western side of Washington State, we crossed the border into Canada and skirted around a few of the islands, before catching a ferry to Vancouver (Canadian mainland). After a short stay in Vancouver, we cycled south, crossing the border into Bellingham, WA (back in the USA). From Bellingham we started our journey East along the Northern edge of Washington State, crossing into the “panhandle” of Idaho (that’s why it only took us 2 days to get through it – it’s really narrow at this latitude), and now we are in Montana. We are cycling South East through Montana and down into Wyoming, where we will visit Yellowstone National Park. We’ll then cut back up into Montana, before reaching North Dakota and continuing in an Easterly direction. IT support (aka Badge) will make some changes to the photo gallery to reflect this. Also, check out the Garmin Connect link to see our precise movements reflected on Google Maps!!
Back to the present… we met some lovely people today. As we stopped to eat our carefully prepared packed lunch (scrambled egg and ham bagels) in Clark Fork, ID, we found a nice picnic table, which we shared with Carmen, and her children, Jordan and Taylor, and had a great chat as we munched away. Then John, another touring cyclist from Alaska, who is cycling from Washington State to Michigan, pulled up and joined us for a few minutes. The 3 of us then cycled along together for 10 – 15 miles or so, gabbing away about cycling things and hearing about Alaska (we really want to go there one day). Suddenly John shouted that he could see a Moose. Being from Alaska, John’s ability to sniff out a Moose at 50 paces is hardly surprising. Bit like us spotting a C-list TV celebrity coming from Crouch End… Anyway, it took us a good few seconds of scanning around madly before we finally saw it…right in front of us on the road! Of course, by the time we got close enough for a photo it had disappeared into the woods, but we tried.
And as you will see from the photos, it was another perfect cycling day, with bright sunshine, little wind, quiet roads and truly stunning scenery. With all that going for us, and despite the fact that we had a net climb of 500ft over the course of the day (i.e. we are 500ft higher tonight than we were this morning) we managed to clock in a high average speed today. Good job really since the transition from Idaho to Montana also meant that we lost an hour! Yes, we’re back on Mountain Standard Time now i.e. 7 hrs behind the UK, which meant that it was just after 8pm when we eventually rolled into Thompson Falls, MT. After a very, and we mean very quick shower at our comfy motel, we headed straight out to grab a quick bite before turning in for the night.
Us x
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