I was up at 5:45, concerned about today's forecast in the 90s, and had a great breakfast at the Creekside B&B. The owners, like about half the people I've talked to in the last two days, are expat Southern Californians, and Jim has redone a wonderful old house in a comfy place to stay at a reasonable price. He's a good cook too, with a nice omelette, home made bread and home made blackberry preserves for breakfast.
The Creekside B&B
Was ready to pack up the bike just before 7, when I discovered that my bike tire was mushy. Another flat, this time the culprit was a small thorn. I'm wondering how it got in there, since I had changed the back tire on Monday, going over Galena, but maybe I missed something in the tire in the heat and my tiredness.
30 minutes later, I was packed and rolled down most of the three miles I'd climbed in the 95 degree heat yesterday. It was cool, but not cold, and I left my jacket on for about the first half hour of riding down the Salmon Valley.
The river continued through a mostly desert landscape, going past some nice ranches, and a lot, and I do mean a lot for this part of the world, trophy homes and ranches. The finally petered out about 15 miles from town, and the river canyon became quite wild. No herons today though I was on the lookout for birds.
It was a great cool morning, and the canyon was often in shade, so the first 30 miles went by pretty quickly, and at 10 I stopped for a snack in a cool spot. Shortly after that I passed a log cabin that Jim has restored for the owner. It was pretty neat, and in a nice grove of trees, with a creek flowing past.
After a few miles more, the canyon got progressively more developed, and I was surprised to see so many houses. The riverside hay fields had been chopped up into ranchettes, some quite splendid looking (and clearly inhabited by those from SoCal) and others simply mobile homes with some dirt and horses around them. They all shared a love of ATVs, which seem to be the local status symbol, and there are large areas of the mountains around here where they are allowed to tear up the terrain. Somehow the erosion that they cause isn't seen as a problem for the salmon restoration, hmmmm.
A little later and it started to get into the upper 80s, but the canyon was much greener, with more trees, so it didn't feel as hot as yesterday.
Just after this lovely spot, here's the Orange County dream home of the day:
I don't think you can see the American flag on the right at this resolution
How a town of 3000 can have 20 miles of sprawl up the canyon is a surprise to me. Having ruined southern California, they've clearly brought all their bad environmental practices and conservative politics with them (despite a cool vibe around Salmon, the area is 75% Romney country, 10% more than the Idaho average).
I passed through the 45th parallel, headed for a pole for the second time this year, this time the North Pole. Beth and I crossed 45 south in March on our way south in New Zealand.
I believe I'll cross it at least two more times, once going south and once going north.
I doubt the owner has read the Emma Lazarus poem
About 15 miles out of town, the early afternoon up canyon wind started, and it was hot again, and as I came out of the canyon, into the beautiful Lemhi Valley, home to Sacajawea, it was already in the 90s.
Happily a little campground and river put in appeared, with lots of trees. A nice rest about 8 miles from town. However the water was funky, so not very refreshing. There's a lot of funky water in these parts, so when you find good water, it's a good idea to fill up.
I rolled into town around noon, and went to the visitor center. I passed a couple of loaded bikes at one of the cafes and it was nice to know that there were other long distance cyclists in town. I wondered where they had come from, as I hadn't seen them on the road today.
The first, nice, motel on the river was full already, so plan B was to go back through town and check the other places. When I rolled back through town, the cyclists were gone, and I was wondering where they had gone. My motel is full tonight, so it's clearly high tourist season here. There were a lot of rafters waiting for their trips to start, so town is pretty busy. The Salmon River is one of the famous multi day river trips, so the town is full of nice, but not overdone, restaurants and shops.
I went out to the Sacajawea Interpretive Center, which wasn't here when I was here years ago. And there were the cyclists! A couple from Portland, they were riding US 93 in the opposite direction. They were planning to stay in town for the day to catch up on things, so we traded blogs and they went on their way.
Sacajawea has been one of my heroes since 2nd or 3rd grade, when I devoured the entire series of American biographies (a couple of hundred at least). The little museum had great interpretation, and nice oral histories of the Shoshone who were deported from here to the lava desert in southern Idaho. The oral histories are quite moving.
On the trail down by the river, I met a family from San Diego (South Park!) whose daughter is an archeology grad student at Indiana University. She's spending her summer here on digs, and it was interesting to hear what she was up to. I never knew the Forest Service had summer archeology programs!
A traditional teepee
The center has workshops for the Shoshone to pass on many traditional practices to the younger members of the tribe, and the grounds are scattered with the results, which are pretty cool.
These were the summer shelters they used
I went by the city park on my way back into town, but the pool was super full of kids, so I watched a couple of guys slacklining in the park. No surprise, they were river guides.
On my way to the supermarket I ran into the female half the Portland cyclists, who told me about a cool bike shop with wifi, pizza and beer. I thought I'd check it out later around dinner time.
While I was in the supermarket, in my smelly cycling clothes, I had a few locals ask if I'd cycled there, and found out that a lot of people only live here in the summer, and go back to California or Arizona or Nevada in the winter. Hence the liberal vibe in the summer. The year round population is pretty conservative I heard from one woman who used to be a teacher in the local school.
When I went to dinner the groovy café was full, so I went over the Hub, the bike shop/pizza/brew pub, and there was music outside and all kinds of cool people around. I had some pizza, did some emails, and of course ran into the Portland cyclists again! They were about to head out of town and camp along the river, at one of the many nice campgrounds along the way. It was still super hot though, and I was grateful that I would be sleeping in a cool motel room, as I planned to get up and be away by 6 AM for tomorrow's big climb into Montana.
All in all a nice day, but I'm sure getting sick of temperatures 10-20 degrees above normal.
It's up early tomorrow for the long climb over Lost Trail Pass into MONTANA!
You forgot the part where you met us :) Interesting to read an account of the route in the opposite direction. flycascadia.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteYou're right, I'm fixing that now! I was super tired and went to bed at 8:30 that night.
ReplyDelete