Our Own Private Idaho

Well, we made it to Idaho. All in all, Washington was a mixed bag. It was beautiful and rugged, and populated with very friendly people. It was also filled with high mountain passes, cold rainy weather, and multpile mechanical problems.

We made it up and down a number of passes with varying heights and degree of steepness. One constant over them all, is that recumbent tricycles don't like steep hills. Gravity is not your friend when you are pedaling up an 8% grade with an over-sized load hanging out on the back of your trike. No matter how much momentum you get on the downhill side, it all dissipates with the first 10% of the next uphill grade and then pulls heavily at you as you grind toward the top. I equate it to jumping on that recumbent trike at your local health club, setting it to a very high level (making it hard to do more than thirty revolutions per minute), start pushing, and don't stop for five hours. Welcome to our world.

Following the Pend Oreille River, we witnessed a lot of flooding due to snow melt. Many local events have been canceled due to the high waters. We saw a large heard of bison wading through fields that were most likely dry a week before. Folks are nervous that the warm weather of the last couple of days are going to increase the volume of water flowing into the lakes and rivers.

A couple of shout-outs to folks we met along the way so far:

o There was the group of seven kids and two adults who are riding to York, Maine in support of disabled vetrans. We met them on a long uphill (of course) out of Colville where the roads were in the process of being oiled, coating Jake and I in a fine splatter the whole way up.

o There was the sweet woman who worked at Boo Boo's cafe in Usk, who fed us breakfast burritos and then gave us huckleberry pastries for the road (which then flew off of the back of Jake's bike). Boo Boo took this picture.

o There was the very nice couple, Chuck and Janet, who we met in a campground at Round Lake, who have a sweet grandson named Sebastion.

o And then there was Greg, the master mechanic at Sports Plus in Sandpoint who spent over three hours working on our trikes (especially Jake's) hopefully ending the frequent problems with tires and tubes that has been slowing us down for the last week (Jake had gone through four tires and seven tubes due to an alignment problem with his front wheels). Thanks again Greg!!

Sandpont, Id, where we are tonight, is an interesting town on the border with eastern Washington. It has the largest lake in Idaho, which is also the fifth deepest in the US. The lake has a decent beach, where we saw a number of kids and adults swimming today, but is ringed by snow-capped peaks.

We took a needed rest day today and will head into Montana tomorrow (where we will spend the next 10 days or so). There we will cross the Continental Divide at Logan Pass (in about a week).

The trip continues to be difficult and wonderful!