Wednesdays, August 4 – Cascade to McCall, 30 miles
Last night was pretty exciting. We had a fierce thunder storm early in the night and then a pretty good rain during the early morning. I was really encouraged by how well our tent held up in very heavy winds. When I first got up I had the presence of mind to throw some of our things in a drier and we broke camp and left both early and in pretty good shape. One more time I want to complement the Arrowhead RV and Camping Grounds, Cascade, ID for a very tidy little operation and a nice value.
We are sort of like frogs jumping from lily pad to lily pad now, in that, as much as possible, I want to plan our days so the worst of our climbing comes early. That obviously won’t be possible thru out but it lays out pretty well for the next few days. It means we target a short day today, with a hard early climb and the same thing tomorrow, followed by a long day. We’re headed into an area called Long Valley, so I’m pretty optimistic about the day. So we started out early under very heavy threatening skies, got a good breakfast and put in some miles under cooler temps. About 5 miles in we hit our climb. ( Looking back towards Cascade at one point, we can clearly see a lot of smoke and we’re thinking that last night’s lightning has started a fire) Some parts of the climb were quite steep and we did some walking but then as promised the ride opened up into a large open valley that looked somewhat like the Champlain Valley at home. We rolled into our half way point at about 11:30 where once again there was heavy construction going on, one way traffic, etc and once again the road crew was really great in terms of giving us all the chance we needed to get ourselves through successfully. We saw many more osprey and lots of cattle, some of which was very curious about us and came to the fence lines to greet us and followed us along the road. I saw cattle with actual brands on their sides which I think is a first. A very pretty ride also. We reached McCall at around 1:00. McCall is a very big tourist destination so traffic was pretty nasty, but all in all it was a nice ride despite temps once again climbing to around 100. We looked around some and chose a campground and settled in. The campground is a real bargain and has pretty good wifi so I’m able to catch up on some of these postings and on some email. Campground is right across from the McCall airport and there are Forestry Service planes and helicopters coming and going constantly so apparently our early morning view of the smoke really is a fire of some size.
Got some dinner in an okay Mexican restaurant and settled in.
All in all it was a really great day. Tomorrow should be very similar but shorter still, taking us a little past New Meadows which should then set us up for a long day following. I hope I’m not being deluded but based on the climbing we’ve already been doing and the time we have to get some more hard riding in, I’m feeling more optimistic about us going over Lolo Pass. That’s a huge target and who knows how it will actually work out but it’s a week away so far now I’m a happy camper.
Separate note: I haven’t been able to get any update on Bob Daniels so I am concerned about that and hoping to hear something tomorrow.
Michael
No comments:
Post a Comment