New Meadows, ID to Cambridge, ID
Friendly horn taps: 1
Miles: 52
Total so far: 4,077
Beauty break...wildflowers in sagebrush
It happened again today. I’ve seen this repeated in one form or another a couple of dozen times. It’s usually a man, never a woman, and the exchange goes something like this:
He: “Where are you headed to?”
Me: “Astoria, Oregon.”
He: “Wow. Well, when you leave here, “I’d take the 107 to 84, head up to 176, and across Hoodang County that way. That will probably save you a ton of miles. Heck, it’s a straight shot from here if you know what I mean.”
Me: “Thanks for that, but we have these maps and they route us all over the place to avoid heavy traffic and commercial vehicles. They take us the most scenic routes, with good road shoulders to ride on when possible.”
He: (Not very happy about having his route advice ignored) “Son, I figure you are an intelligent person, you look like one anyway, trust me, I know these roads like the back of my own hand.”
Me: “Yea, well I think I got that…107 to 84 and head up to 176, right?”
And then I follow the map when I get out of sight of the advice giver. He’s only trying to be helpful, but this is like some strange male ritual where the stranger in the county must yield to the insistence of the resident native. Especially if the stranger in the county is wearing spandex.
it's usually not signed, but we may cross the 45th Parallel three times. I'm not counting.
For those who have been following us, and those who have maybe made the mistake of taking out a map to track our route with pins or other devices and made guesses as to what roads we took, you will notice we are just now finishing a big giant southern dash after a long northern trek up to Missoula, Montana. yes we’ve gone 300 miles south, after going 300 miles north. We’ll next go west to the coast, and back north again. The zig-zags are intentional.
Missoula is where the headquarters for Adventure Cycling Association is located (Those are the people who furnish our maps and routes. Sallie refers to the ACA headquarters as the mother ship). Touring cyclists that stop in get a free ice cream cone and their picture taken. We did not stop, because we rode through there on the Sunday of the Fourth of July weekend.
ANYWAY, the purpose of that northern swing is not exclusively for picture taking and ice cream eating, but this is a tour. The routes have been carefully researched and provide a genuine showcase of roads for cyclists wanting to see this nation. The maps are like a complicated formula in algebra. If you skip some steps, you’ll get a different answer. It is not a way to get up to Hoodang County by saving a ton of miles. We heard of another group who wanted to avoid the mountains of Colorado and chose to go from Kansas to Fort Collins, and then up to Laramie, Wyoming. That’s great…but they missed Breckenridge, Frisco, and the other attractions of the ski areas in summer (and they had to ride bicycles north on Highway 287). I’m told the same group intended not to make the northern swing into Missoula, but take a short-cut across Idaho. If they do that, they miss the great rivers we just traced.
Yes, this is a lot of work, but bicycles are like that. They don’t pedal themselves. You may have noticed we’ve just passed the 4,000 mile mark (Yea!!). Our current estimates are that we’ll finish with something closer to 4,760 miles. Anyone can cross the country, even from Florida to Oregon, in less miles than that…but this is not about saving miles, but making our ride a tour of the nation.
Life is like that…there are more direct paths to take, but we’d miss out on the tour. I’m so very grateful that I’ve chosen the latter.
Frontier Motel in Cambridge, ID: Cyclists get a camping spot out back, showers, laundry and a pool for $10. This is what it looked like right before I jumped in (I've always wanted to do that to a quiet pool).
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Tomorrow’s ride is dedicated to Paul Justin Clark
Paul Justin Clark
Paul Clark, a resident of Mesa , Arizona was killed by a drunk driver on March 17, 2007. Paul was but 25 years old.
In Memory of Warmer Summers 