Idaho to Montana

Riggins was not quite the oasis I had hoped for, even though we were descending there was a crazy head wind not much fun. Ran into an interesting fellow from Berkeley that was headed west, some good info about super nice people up the road.
A really nice couple from Tennessee was doing their laundry at the RV place we stayed at in Riggins. They were on a summer boating adventure. It really made me miss playing on the river.

After leaving Riggins we had our big climb of this section--White Bird Hill. People see you with a fully loaded bike and start warning you of climbs at least 50 miles out. White Bird turned out to be a nice climb. We took the old highway which had a series of crazy switchbacks at this point in the day I was feeling less than superb. However after grubbing some chicken at the next town and enjoying an unexpected long decent I was raring to go. We had originally planned to spend the night in Koskia but decided to press on to Lowell. In Koskia we met Bob and Ron, Bob is 72 years old and Ron is 66 pretty amazing. I hope I can be that cool when I grow up. Idaho was gorgeous through this section. A nice couple waved us to the side of the road to enjoy some cherries from their tree, aah the joys of being on a bike.
Lowell was super cool basically a boating mecca and they had hot tubs. The next day was awesome slowly cruised up the river, the cool thing was lunch was at natural hot spring. Definitely need to get back to this part of Idaho to play.

One last climb and Idaho was behind me Lolo pass, was a nice gradual climb followed by a descent into Montana. Currently in Missoula and falling in love with the place. It has awesome biking, boating and skiing, plus everyone is really chill. Met one fellow on the way down named Ben turns out his wife cheated on him so packed up his bike and headed out, seemed like a really nice guy whose life had been turned upside down, on the plus side he got out of Lincoln NE and planned on biking as long as possible. Adventure cycling's office is here in missoula really nice. what is amazing is that in 1976 4000 people rode the bike centennial trans America route