Sunday, Aug 9, Riggins to Grangeville, ID, 40 miles

Another terrific day. Riggins was so nice that we didn't want to leave but we finally did, somewhat late as we were planning a short day to White Bird. Beautiful day, more downhill, more headwind. Saw deer (mule deer, I assume) and quail and pheasants in the scrub. Also as we rode through canyons downriver we saw many holes in the rock faces and other remnants of small time gold mining operations
We were passed by a young solo rider who rode with us a while and talked. He was from Barcelona, Spain . He flew to NYC, rode from there to Florida, from there to Southern CA, rode up US 101 to Florence, OR (our start point) and was now riding the transam cross country to VA. Unreal. After a short time he said good bye and disappeared in front of us.
As the day went on we did some big time climbing towards White Bird and then dropped about half a mile into the village. Bad news. There is no camping here and the only motel is a total dump. We are faced with a terribly steep 6 mile climb that we had planned to do tomorrow while fresh, or a slightly less steep but 11 mile long climb or spending the night camping in "the town park" with no facilities. We wandered into a bar to get water and ask about other options. Judith asked if anybody there had any interest in giving us a lift up the mountain and a fellow at the bar said, sure, if you can hang around a while. We took him up on it and said we'd wait outside in the shade while he finished up. He was quite a while and we were starting to worry about how many rounds were going to pass before our ride and how exciting that might get when Judith went in for water and came back out with him. Introduced ourselves to "Cactus Merrill" (it was right there on his belt buckle) and he gave us a great lift up the mountain and some good advice about hills to come (he's been driving truck thru this area for years). Another blessing.
In conversation, Judy mentioned how beautiful ID is and how natives don't seem to leave while others come here. Cactus said “the only reason anybody leaves ID is to make a living, cuz they darned sure can't make one here”.
After his boost we were able to get all the way to Grangeville and have found a very nice campgrounds - The Bear Den - for only ten dollars. That and a good dinner in town and we are loaded for bear tomorrow.
While we waited for Cactus we met a couple going west who had just come over the big climb. They were both pulling bob trailers and carrying a lot of gear. Very grizzled, very odd couple. She recounted a number of incidents on the road with traffic, some of which had given her a pretty good battering and a buzz in her head. “Some folks pay for that buying drugs, I got it for free”. Okaaay.
One more note on White Bird: although this White Bird is named after a Nez Perce Indian of some historical note I had been carrying around a connection in my head to a special song from 1969, “White Bird” by “ Its’ a Beautiful Day”. This was an iconic hippy song, evoking beautiful images, fully of jazzy violin and I had connected the place with the song at some level. Double bummer to see the place.