Cycling Again

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Sunday



Our day started out at McDonalds. Little did we know that we were visiting the National Champions of quickest drive thru breakfast McDonalds ... but we were. Since we didn’t know, we went into the lobby. Most of the staff were wearing their National Champion shirts; the high schooler behind the counter wasn’t wearing his, because it is hot. We asked them what they were champions of, and heard the tale of the recent - and undisclosed - national McDonalds competition to determine over a 6 week period, which McDonalds had the fastest drive thru service, well the winner was the McDonald’s on Vista in Boise. Their nearest competitor was in Alaska.

Next we headed north. Our destination is St Marie’s, ID. We chose the scenic route, along the Palette River. What a lovely river, with white water rapids, and guide and shuttle service. Had we known, a little whitewater kayaking would have been fun .... next time though.

We stopped in McCall - super cute town on a lake with sailing and bike riding. Looks like so much fun. Next time we know this is a must stop town.

Somewhere along the way, we crossed the 45th parallel halfway between the equator and North Pole. I’m sure Bill Hagen knew this, but I didn’t.

But the greatest thing we saw yesterday was on the Nez Perce reservation. They have labels on their crops, so you know what they are growing. I can only reliably identify corn and soybeans ... so here is what we saw yesterday ... winter canola, mustard, spring wheat, Austrian winter peas, spring oats, spring barley, garbanzo beans.

We got to our hotel in St Marie’s, they offered to shuttle us to the trail head 11 miles away in the morning. We are all set, except for packing our saddlebags tonight for our next 3 days, covering 150 miles of bike trails.



Monday

We started off on our ride from Plummer, ID at about 1030 this morning. We made the 54 miles to Kellogg by 4 PM with a lunch, a few water, and one moose sighting stop.

The moose were doing moose things - eating trees and shrubs - right next to the bike trail. 2 of them. We watched them until they moved on to other snacks.

We started off with 28 Canadian riders. Th y originally had a group of 30, but had 2 casualties yesterday in the gravel who were not riding anymore. They were doing the bike trail we are doing, plus a gravel loop. Dave and I have ridden gravel before, and this was never our plan. And after hearing of the injuries, we were not going to change it. We are up and back on the same paved trail.

Tomorrow we are off to Wallace, ID and the Hiawatha trail before coming back to Kellogg. Should be about 50ish miles again. Then back to Plummer to complete our cycling.

Really pictures will follow - probably Thursday night form Billings. We are having a great time here in Idaho - or as I tell the natives, Iowa’s cousin state.

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