Beautiful Ride From Idaho into Montana

On Saturday, we rode from Bonner's Ferry, Idaho to Libby, Montana. The scenery was spectacular and the sights were interesting, as you can see from the photos below.

Looking down 425 feet to the Moyie River, in Idaho, from the Moyie Canyon Bridge

Entering Montana

US Highway 2 in Montana (you can see why we're

looking forward to cycling 750 miles on this road)

The Troy, MT, bike shop where we bought a new tire

We have to get past these snow-covered peaks to reach Philadelphia

The Kootenai River Falls

Carol on the Swinging Bridge over the Kootenai River

The Invaluable $1 Bicycle Repair

Several years ago we learned a technique for dealing with a gash in a bike tire, to prevent the tube from bulging out through the gash (like an aneurysm) and exploding: cut up a one-dollar bill into appropriate sized pieces, and place these pieces on the inside of the tire (between the tube and the tire) at the site of the gash. The rationale for a dollar bill is that it is made of strong paper. We've never before had to employ this technique, but on Friday afternoon it was crucial to allow us to continue cycling.

     Halfway through our ride, we reached a milestone, surpassing 1000 miles since we left Boston on April 20. That includes 332 miles on the first segment of our trip (Boston to Philadelphia), and 648 miles so far on the second segment of our trip (Astoria, Oregon to Philadelphia). Only 2800 miles to go!

     Shortly after reaching that milestone, Peter heard a sudden hissing sound from his rear tire as it lost all of its air. We removed the wheel, then took off the tire and tube. The tire had a sizable gash in it. When we replaced the tube and pumped it up, the tube bulged out through the gash. So we quickly let the air out and employed the dollar bill technique, and all was well. This provides a temporary fix until we get to Troy, Idaho, 35 miles into our Saturday ride, where we confirmed that we will be able to purchase a replacement tire of the right size.

     On our trip to this point, we've rarely been on any one road for more than 5 miles or so. That changed dramatically today, as we got onto US Highway 2 and will continue on it for 750 miles through Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota. We always prefer secondary roads (if they're paved) to highways, but in this part of the country the population density is evidently too low to support having many such secondary roads.

1000 miles completed, 2800 miles to go

 

Crossing a causeway into the beautiful town of Sandpoint, Idaho.

Lake in the foreground, snow-capped peaks behind

The start of 750 miles along Route 2

Fixing a flat tire

Cutting a $1 bill to prevent a bike tube "aneurysm"

Entering Idaho, and Eating Our Way Across America

     On Thursday, we entered Idaho, cycling from Spokane eastward to Coeur D'Alene and then northward to Athol, where we stayed at a beautiful B&B called the Ponderosa Lodge (no relation to the 1960's TV show "Bonanza"). Shortly before leaving Spokane, Carol learned from her father that she has a second cousin, Carol Landon, who, together with her mother Joan, lives in Hayden Lake, Idaho, about 12 miles from Athol. We contacted these relatives and had a wonderful visit with them on Thursday afternoon.

     Prior blog posts have noted how our pre-trip planning included not only reserving all of our hotels well in advance, but also selecting every road that we cycle on. But man can't live by sleep and cycling alone, so eating arrangements were (and continue to be) an important part of the planning process as well. We burn a lot of calories biking, so we "pay ourselves back" by eating a lot of food and, whenever possible, by eating excellent food. Before we leave each day we go online to research where we can have our morning snack (ideally at about 10 am) and a hot lunch (ideally at about 12:30 pm), and we also carry plenty of snack food with us in case we can't find a store at the right time. For dinners, when we made our lodging reservations months ago we checked on the availability of nearby restaurants. Since it turned out that the Ponderosa Lodge has no nearby restaurants, when we reserved our night here we made arrangements with the B&B owners to cook us dinner, and they put together a gourmet steak dinner for us.

     And now for a little history: The town of Hayden Lake, where Carol and Joan Landon live and which we cycled through, has an infamous past but a pleasant present. From 1970 until 2001, the Neo-Nazi organization Aryan Nations, led by Richard Butler, had its headquarters in a 20 acre compound at Hayden Lake. In September 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center won a $6.3 million judgment against Aryan Nations, awarding punitive and compensatory damages to a mother and son who were attacked by Aryan Nations guards in 1999. As a result of the judgment, Richard Butler turned over the 20-acre compound to the mother and son, who then sold the property to a philanthropist who, in turn, donated the land to North Idaho College. As a result, the town is now free of the stain of this group. On hearing that the group is no longer in Hayden Lake, an old friend of Peter's emailed him to say "So you can order the matzah ball soup after all!"

Carol, with Joan and Carol Landon

Peter is now safe in Hayden Lake

Arriving at the Ponderosa Lodge

Our junk food stash

Lunch in Hayden Lake

Gourmet dinner at the Ponderosa Lodge

A Day Spent Writing and Teaching

     Since we cycled all the way into Spokane yesterday (further than we had originally planned), today was a no-bike day. "Rest" is not a word in our vocabularies, however, so we spent a very busy day. From 6:30 - 11:30 am, we caught up on email and revised a few more chapters of our book (Atlas of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology). We then walked across the street to Sacred Heart Medical Center where, hosted by Radiology residency director Dr. Terri Lewis and residency coordinator Sherry Bucholz, we spent 5 hours lecturing to the residents and holding board review sessions.
     Tomorrow: On to Idaho.

Outside the Medical Center

With the residents in the conference room

Peter, Carol, Terri Lewis, Sherry Bucholz

The Miracles of Modern Technology

     Our trip has been going incredibly smoothly so far, in large part due to careful planning over the months leading up to it. We not only reserved all of our hotels well in advance, but also chose every road that we'll take on the 3800 mile trip. Road choice is important, since we not only want to be on secondary roads (off the interstates and most other highways), but also to be on paved roads since the skinny tires (23 mm) on our road bikes do very poorly on dirt roads. We tried several methods to determine whether a road is paved or not, but found that the most reliable method is to zoom in on Google Maps satellite view and check whether there's a painted line down the middle of the road: if it's there, we know the road is paved, and if not, we can't be sure and thus we avoid the road. Once we made our road selection (which we did a couple of months prior to the trip), we created a route on Mapsource (the computer mapping program that accompanies our Garmin GPS unit) and transferred the route to the GPS unit. With the GPS on our handlebars, we just go wherever it directs us. In 3 weeks, and ~1000 miles, of biking so far, we haven't been on a single unpaved road.
     Tuesday was another "double-duty" bike day. We started out in Ritzville, WA and had originally planned to go 55 miles to Cheney, WA, then have a short bike day to Spokane on Wednesday to get there in time for a teaching session starting at noon. Our legs are feeling really strong by now, so we did the entire 72 mile ride from Ritzville to Spokane on Tuesday. We even got to Spokane early enough for Peter to get a haircut (to look decent for Wednesday's teaching session) and then to go to an upscale restaurant for dinner.

The Google maps satellite view of one of the roads we cycled on today.

When we planned our route months ago, we saw the dashed

line down the middle of the road, confirming that it's paved.

A roadside stop, with curious onlookers

Out for a wonderful salmon dinner in Spokane

Starting Our Ascent Up to the Continental Divide

     The Continental Divide is the mountainous divide of the Americas that separates the river systems that drain into the Pacific Ocean from those that drain into the Atlantic Ocean:  Rivers west of the Divide drain into the Pacific, while those east of the divide drain into the Atlantic. In the United States, it travels through the Rocky Mountains in Montana in the north, continuing through Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.

     We began our gradual ascent up to the Divide on Sunday, May 9. We crossed the beautiful cable bridge out of Kennewick, WA at an elevation of 350 feet. During all of Sunday and Monday, we went up and down rolling hills, but each up was a little higher than the previous down, so we gradually gained altitude. Our destination town on Sunday – Connell, WA – was at 850 feet, and Monday brought us to Ritzville, WA, at an elevation of 1800 feet. We will continue this gradual ascent until we cross the Divide on Thursday, May 20 in Montana.

     During most of our Sunday and Monday rides, we rode on quiet roads through farm and ranch country. We were generally surrounded by massive fields stretching for miles in every direction around us, on roads in which a car or truck would pass every half hour or so. While we like to eat well (and a lot) on our bike trips, ideally finding a nice restaurant for lunch and then again for dinner, the desolate nature of our route made finding lunch stops out of the question, so we had to carry food with us.

The beautiful cable bridge leaving Kennewick, WA

Endless fields, desolate roads

No fancy restaurants to be found, so this bench had to suffice

A Nice Ride, Funny Rocks, and Dinner With Relatives

For the past week, we've been following the border between Oregon and Washington State (located down the middle of the Columbia River), crossing back and forth between them multiple times. Today (Saturday) we left Oregon for good, and will be spending the next few days in Washington. The ride was a very pleasant one, on well-paved roads with excellent shoulders. A curious feature of the landscape was the presence of several large rocks with flat tops, appearing something like hats.
     One of the terrific aspects of our trip so far has been the opportunity to get together with relatives and friends at multiple sites on route. In fact, two-thirds of our dinners so far have been with our children, father, cousins, and  other relatives, as well as several friends. Today was no exception, as we dined with Carol's second cousin Madeleine and her husband Lyle, who live near our current location of Kennewick, WA.

Leaving Oregon & entering Washington, for the last time

A funny-shaped rock

It even gets its own state park

Another funny-shaped rock

Our hotel, the Clover Island Inn, located on an island with a large marina

Dinner with Madeleine & Lyle