Alan and Donna and Lewis reach 1000 miles today!

Monday June 22
This day is now history. Or nearly so. I’m sitting in the laundry and shower area of the Swiftwater RV park just outside of White Bird Idaho. They have wireless baby! This day started out pretty much the way the day before ended up. Last night we were situated at Zims Hot Springs and it was raining. The rain continued throughout the night and then mysteriously it just stopped about the time the skies began lightening. I felt this might be an omen. We took our tired selves into the office area of Zims at about 7:45 and helped ourselves to some coffee and I finished writing yesterdays blog. See, the day started out just liked it ended the day before!
Dang it was cold. The overnight temps had to have been near 40 and we noticed there was fresh snow on the adjacent mountains. This is supposed to be Idaho where it’s hot in the summer! Lewis got the opportunity to swim again and Donna joined him. I finished writing and then went out side to pack the bikes while they relaxed in comfort. I had everything ready to go by 10:00 and went back into the comfort of the lobby of Zims. When Donna and Lewis joined me in the lobby ready to roll, the skies opened up again. With temperatures in the middle 40’s we decided to wait out this rain. We had heard several forecasts predicting clearing skies and cool. No mention of rain. So we were confident this was just a fluke shower passing thru. Forty five minutes later the fluke shower was intensifying. Not to worry. Today we were mostly riding downhill to get to White Bird. So we relaxed and had our lunch, I did some e-mail and checked out weather dot com. I saw the satellite image of these showers that kept popping up right where we were. That’s weird. Thank God for technology! So the showers were kind of isolated but not really cuz they kept happening to the area around Zims. Lewis got the chance to go swimming yet again while Donna and I sat down to read some magazines. Finally at about 1:45 the rain stopped.

We were on the road by 2:00. Worst start of the trip. Miles to go today: 60.

The first 30 miles we covered in an hour and a half as we flew down hill with a great tailwind. This is what touring cyclists live for. We stopped for lunch in Riggins and then immediately got back in the saddle. The next 30 miles took just over 3 hours and we pulled into our present accomodations just before 8:00. We’re camped next to the Salmon River which we’ve been following most of the day. I almost forgot to mention the weather after we left Zims. Within 20 minutes of departing we noticed the temperatures increasing and the cloud cover decreasing. By the end of the day, the skies had cleared and the temperatures ended up approaching 70 degrees. Perfect cycling if only a bit delayed. Can you imagine what we might have accomplished had we gotten started at say 10:00? I’m guessing that we probably could have ridden at least 65 miles!