This morning, after a breakfast downtown, I payed a visit to the Adventure Cycling Association office in Missoula. The ACA is the publisher of the Trans America Trail route maps (and others). At the ACA office I was helped by Sarah and Tom, who took my picture for their wall, showed me around gave me free ice cream :) I also had my bike weighed... the scale showed around 110 lbs (50 kg) :S. I also got a route map for the section from Astoria (end of Transam route) to Seattle (from where I'm flying back).
I left Missoula towards the end of the morning, when it had already gotten pretty warm. Today I will be riding over Lolo Pass, some 2000 ft of climbing. The first 1000 ft of ascend towards the beginning if the pass were very gradual and easy. During this bit I encountered Karel, a Dutch guy who is riding the Transam west to east on a recumbent bike, with whom I had a short chat.
The pass itself was relatively steep and especially hard due to the high temperatures in the mid 90's. At the top of the pass I crossed into Idaho and also crossed the time boundary into Pacific to time. For the coming 100 miles there is no cell reception, so these posts will probably pop up a bit later than expected. After the pass was a long descent through beautiful valley of the Lochsa River. I rode to a Campground some 4 miles past Powell, only to find out there was no water... the coming 66 miles would also have no water, so I rode back to Powell and went to the campground there.
To pay my fee I needed some dollar bills, so I asked the closest campers, two couples in two small RV's whether they could change. They could and also invited me over for a cold beer, can't say no to that. After enjoying a nice cold beer and interesting conversation with Mike, Laurie, Cathie and Cork, they invited me also to have dinner with them. So after pitching my tent and taking a refreshing dip in the Lochsa River, I went to their campsite again. They made lovely spaghetti Bolognese with a salad with fresh veggies from their garden back home. To finish it off they even had a delicious desert from their Dutch oven! I had the best time during dinner and the rest of the evening spending with these extremely fun, friendly and interesting people!
We had a GREAT time meeting and having dinner with Wouter!!
ReplyDeleteOk, the previous comment was a "test" so I could figure out how to comment - previous attempts on my phone were unsuccessful - I am home now and a friend helped me figure out the "process" for commenting!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, again, all four of us thoroughly enjoyed our visit with Wouter (aka "Walter - you have to ask him)! We shared some cold beer (cold being the key word here) and a fantastic dinner while we got to listen to his stories! It was not until reading his blog the first time that I saw that he had actually backtracked six miles to the Powell Junction Campground where we met up with him! What an incredible journey and a fascinating person! We all felt extremely fortunate that our paths crossed . . .