Thursday, August 06, McCall to New Meadows, ID, 15 miles

Wow, what a difference. Today was the living proof of the maxim about being careful what you ask for. We’ve been suffering in the heat and wished for cooler temps. Surprise! We spent most of today’s ride in a pouring rain at 50 degrees.
Anyway…we started out at the campgrounds in McCall. Stopped for breakfast at a huge touristic place where the service was so bad and the servings so sinfully huge that I will never mention them by name (ok, it was The Pancake House and Christmas Shop). The sky was dark and looming when we entered and it was raining hard by the time we finished. We waited around as long as we could and then suited up in our raingear and headed off. First couple miles were easy in spite of the rain and then we began climbing, ending up over a mile up in elevation. We then began a 3 mile downhill where we violated a basic principal of cycling – we walked down hill. Unreal. We had no shoulder at all, traffic was heavy with both RVs and logging trucks and it was pouring. Discretion being the better part of valor, we walked.
We have a very basic, cheap room where we can get dry and plan our next segments. New Meadows was shown in tourist materials back in McCall as having at least three different restaurants and an outdoor equipment store – everything here is closed up and out of business. We ended up with sandwiches from a grocery store that also had a full hunting gear shop and everything from moose heads to rattlesnake skins mounted on the walls. Pretty good sandwiches considering.
Not sure what tomorrow will hold. We need to do either a 35 or a 70 mile day (almost all downhill) but there are severe weather warnings out and even if we can ride in rain, we can't ride in lightning. We'll see what the night will bring.
Side note: we had another night of violent thunder and lightning, listening to the Forestry Service planes and helicopters across the street at the McCall airport as they are fighting many fires back near Cascade (which we passed thru 2 nights ago). I’ve been entertained and impressed by the storms, not really considering the fire damage. Even more so not considering the lightning as dangerous. We learned at breakfast that the night before lightning struck the airport and seriously injured 4 fire fighters working on a helicopter. Two are hospitalized in serious condition. And last night I was lying in our tent listening and watching as it was striking fairly close and saying “how cool”. How stupid is more like it.
Michael