Day 26,
White bird hill
Good morning.
The morning is actually indeed good. No one disturbed me last night, and mostly important – the building was protecting from the wind, so I could actually sleep.
At one time, close to
I got up somewhere around 8 and after
regular morning preparations, got on the road when it was
Within the next 3-5 miles, nice plums tree appeared to grow along the road, which were definitely wild.
I stopped the bike and checked out the plums. They were already pretty soft and sweet. I washed them with the water from the bottle and ate until I didn’t want anymore. (Refer to pictures). But in the next minutes, I was disappointed by finding a tree with a much bigger and softer plums. I tried few of those too and decided to look more carefully next time. J
In few more turns of the road, which
was by the way going along the
So, in few turns, I noticed numerous amounts of big blueberries also growing along the road. I stopped there and ate a nice amount of those, which were extremely sweet and delicious.
After such a fruity “breakfast”, when
it was already close to
The air inside was extremely cool and moist. Coming from the outside was so strikingly different, just as coming to another world. This reminded me the mines of Moria, from the Tolkien’s Epoppe.
In approximately 30-40 meters, the route came to the split of 3 other routes and by this time, I already could not hear anything from the outside. I took one of the routes and kept going for about 5 minutes. The surface inside was pretty flat and easy to walk on, as it actually was a track of a little machine that ran in the mine.
The 2 poor AA batteries in the flash light were about to die, so I just stopped and took a picture with flash, which for a portion of the second, lighted up the whole surrounding inside. It still left the rest of the rout going further, just like it was a black hole that doesn’t reflect any light. J
I turned back as I didn’t want to leave
the bike unattended where I couldn’t absolutely see or hear what’s going on
around it. It would be extremely cool to have a powerful head light here and
plenty of time to go further. But the bike outside could get unwanted attention
and so I had to return back to the warm summer day in
In another 45 minutes of riding, I
became really fascinated by the more and more beautiful views of the
Near the river there was actually a little structure serving as a dressing room with few restrooms. This is actually a place, where canoe tours arrive from somewhere further up the river.
As the water was extremely beautiful and inviting, I rolled the bike closer where I could see it and got a camera ready with a 10 second timer. As 10 seconds started counting down, I ran down and jumped in the water, making a picture that you can see on today’s pictures page.
The water was warm on the surface, but noticeably cooler as it got deeper.
Swimming there was nothing but a paradise, with sand being absolutely clean, warm and natural. J
The interesting thing about the river was also that it was deep with just few steps from the shore.
After such a cool refreshment, I
rode another 20 miles to a café righ near the town of
As already many people warned and told me about the upcoming monster hill, I decided to fill up the bottles and rest a little bit before the climb.
The lady inside was very friendly and let me stay in the cafe with a cup of ice water. The tourists were filling gas at the pump on the other side of the café and for few minutes I just set outside on the bench and watched them.
Finally, I hopped back on the bike and rode across the dusty road going back on 95.
Next half a mile was somewhat like a
hill followed by the downhill. In another mile, I saw a sign pointing to the
town of
I stopped at the bridge astonished by how high it was above the ground (Refer to pictures), and then changed the gears on my bike to the lowest (44 – 29) J starting to climb up.
The hill is 7.2 miles long and gains 3000 feet (1km) in elevation.
Walking up the hill, pretty much took the rest of the afternoon – about 4 hours. Of course I stopped in the middle of it, to explore the Historical Point of the fight with Indians. (refer to Pictures).
The Hwy 95 is actually a new route up
the hill, and up until recently, the old one remained in use, which could
be seen running on the right side, further down. As I actually found out later,
it was still nice useable road with considerably less intense traffic. Few
older people still preferred it over the new one. The old route, at one point,
served as the only North/South route in
At one of the turnouts, I stopped to
rest and finally opened first can of peanut butter, carried all the way from
Eventually, I walked to the top of the hill to some king of White Bird Hill Summit, where, I am not mistaking there is some kind of fancy resort/hotel. J
After the summit, the road began to wind for few miles and was mostly flat. The sun was already must closer to the horizon than to zenith. Then the downhill started and I managed to get a mosquito in the eye.
Some sign informed that now the road was actually going across the great prairies, so I stopped to take another nice picture.
In 10 miles I approached the next town called Grangeville. This is going to be the furthest point for today. Being pretty tired and hungry, I headed straight to the first grocery store and went inside to check if there was anything worth buying.
The only thing worth buying there was bread, but for few minutes I talked to a nice guy, somewhere from the East Cost, if I am not mistaking, which was working in the store. He was kind of interested in the trip and gladly talked about states and some of the traveling he has done. I asked him where the local parks in town were and he nicely tried to explain. There were actually two of them, and for some reason he found it a bit complicated; even though they were just straight further down the road. I don’t know why should have I known the name of the few streets that would intersect before the park, as it is naturally hard to miss the park itself. The man was pretty excited and actually said that he would want to buy me a lunch in the morning if I wouldn’t be gone by something like 8 or 9, but I politely rejected the offer. J Geez, did I look that poor? J
Anyhow, just bread wasn’t enough for the dinner, so I rode further looking for something more.
Meanwhile, there were about 4 loud girls giggling on the sidewalk in front of the theatre. Well, since I already for a long time wanted to see the recently released Terminator 3, I asked if they were showing it there, but the answer was no. However, I’ve been told about the open theatre just 1 mile outside of town where the terminator was supposed to be shown tonight. This sounded great, so I thanked the girls and rode a bit further. The next store had a deli department where I got a pretty cool barbeque sandwich.
After the next few blocks, I saw the park and road that was going to the open theatre a mile away.
By this time it was just getting dark.
I saw the huge screen in the field and went to the gates. The girls at the entrance looked at me with hesitation, thinking whether to charge me or not. I figured that out instantly and asked straight, - Can I go without paying since I don’t have a radio on the bike to listen to the sound with movie and just want to see it for a little while. This appealed a legitimate enough reason and they let me go for free. Maybe they were also curious about the bicycle, but either way the girls weren’t really in their mind, deciding to let me in free of charge.
Anyhow, tonight they showed Thumb Raided 2(or3) movie followed by the Terminator 3.
Of course I knew that sound shouldn’t be a problem, as there probably would be someone with open windows or better yet – convertible, which would create enough audio in the quite field outside of town. But it turned out even better a moment later.
In the middle of the area, there was a kiosk with a bar, video projector etc, where I asked one of the workers if there was a chair I could seat on. There was indeed a nice folding chair and mostly important, right under the projector – was a full size speaker, so I was totally set up the for the evening.
I enjoyed the sandwich through the strange Thumb Raider movie and watched a Terminator on one breath; always was a fan of this movie.
The movies ended at around 2-or 3 in
the morning, and I heard one poor worker complaining that he had to get up at
There was no moon this night and when I had to ride back, I realized it was completely dark that I couldn’t even see the road by itself. It was time to fix the head lamp, hanging on the frame from Jungo road, where the mounting bracket broke from vibration.
I placed the head lamp on the handle bar and secured it with few plastic ties. This worked well and lighted up the road perfectly. Going down the hill, the generator supplied enough power that the flash light was as bright as a motorcycle light, at least this is how it seemed on this dark night.
I rode to the park and set up the tent in behind the pool, where it would be out of sigh in the morning if there would be people around early.
What a terrific day – fruits in the morning, mine, swimming, White Bird Hill and then free movie in the end. J
Total miles today - 45.
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