Day 41

Mileage: 88
Total mileage: 3578

The rapidly changing landscape around here never ceases to amaze me.

Last night I went to sleep on the grass in the park. It never occurred to me that in this dry part of the country, grass shouldn't really be growing naturally. Sure enough, around 2a, I suddenly woke up to the feeling of a freezing jet of water being played across my body. Sure enough, the sprinklers had come on and they were generous with their soaking. You wouldn't believe how quickly I got up and ran with my sleeping bag outside the danger zone. My clothes which had been laid out on the picnic table to dry after last night's laundry were also soaked again and so it took a few trips to get all my stuff, by which point I was pretty wet as well. I moved across the park to a large area with wood chips and spent the next half hour trying to shake my quilt dry. The nice thing about down is that it's super warm and light. The bad part is that it's completely useless when it gets wet. I managed to get most of the moisture off it, enough to get me through the night reasonably warm. I felt my dreams of an early start slipping away though.

This morning I had to hang around until 11 o'clock to get the bag completely dry. I didn't want to pack it up with any moisture and run the risk of compressing the down permanently. As it is, I think my sacrifice of time was made worthwhile by getting it back to normal. To still get decent mileage for the day, my afternoon ran pretty low on social interaction and high on riding.

I got to start out by climbing the last few miles over white bird hill where I got a 10 mile descent down the other side into White Bird. I thought that I'd be returning to coniferous forest after my brief teleportation back into Appalachia, but Idaho had something else in mind. I descended down the switchbacks of the old highway, weaving back and forth down the steep hill on banked turns. It was hard to imagine that this drag used to be the main highway, but that's what I've been told. The locals call it rattlesnake road because of all its bends and turns. It was a fun, if trying, descent into what I can only describe as the Wild West. The road was hugged closely by hills covered in dead grass, broken only by the occasional scraggly tree where a small creek flowed down the terrain. I half expected to run over a rattlesnake or get jumped by bandits.

Neither of those things happened though, and I got into White Bird (population 40) where I stopped just long enough to get water. I walked into a bar where about 6 older guys and the bartender were all sitting at a table, watching a western. No one bothered breaking their gaze as I parked outside, walked through to the bathroom for water and walked out.

I got to keep riding through the same hot terrain for most of the rest of the afternoon, following the Salmon river up and up and up. The opposite of what I got to do with the Lochsa yesterday and the day before. I kept passing rafters going the other way down the river and soon got tired of whistling and waving at each group.

At some point the river diverged from the road and I was left in some higher mountain valleys where they raise a lot of cattle. My the scenery does change quickly around here. So does the time zone. I'm completely confused as to which time zone I'm in because apparently it switched each time I crossed the Salmon river and I have no idea which side I'm on now. Oh well, I guess I'll just ride to Oregon and that'll solve it for me .

I took advantage of the Wi-Fi this morning while waiting for my bag to dry and downloaded a bunch of musicals. I found myself singing along quite often today and if you had driven past me you might have heard me rapping along to Alexander Hamilton or belting Defying Gravity at the top of my lungs on a conveniently placed downhill.

Tonight I'm sleeping in the park in New Meadows after a delicious half of a chicken at the local barbeque pit. I'll be checking carefully for sprinklers before sleep tonight. G'night!