July 9, 2005
Kooskia, ID - Winchester, ID: Another favorite day!
It was cold and misting when I woke up. I was happy my tent was dry under the pavilion. By the time I was ready to ride it was raining pretty hard. Putting a positive spin on things, I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to try out my new rain gear.
It was fairly flat to Kamiah. I stopped at a convenience store there to buy a milk and a muffin. I read the paper and talked to the store cat.
Milk had been a huge issue for me during this trip. I'm not a coffee drinker or a soda drinker, but darned if I don't HAVE to have milk in the morning. We did have milk on a few of the cooler days. Ryan was concerned about the milk going bad in hot weather. A valid point. He also said that powdered milk was much cheaper than 'real' milk. Sorry, I'm just not doing powdered milk. There were quite a few evenings I bought a bag of ice and a quart of milk on my own in order to have milk in the morning.
At Kamiah I turned onto Rd. 162. It was my favorite road of the entire trip - I think. That's a pretty strong statement to make. There were a couple of other roads that were way up there.
Up is the key word. This was as good of a climb as any we'd had. I would describe the road as climbing rollers. I was getting too warm in my rain gear. I took off the pants and unzipped the pit zips on my jacket. That seemed to be a good combination. My glasses were fogging over, so I took them off. There was no traffic at all on the road. The rain made all of the greenery extra lush.
Once I got to the top I was in farm country. The soil was black, black. I stopped and spoke with a woman getting her mail. She said that the soil is black from a volcano in ancient times. She also said all of the yellow flowers were rape seed. It's used to make canola oil. The fields looked like a patchwork quilt with all of the different crops and the black soil. I took many photos, but couldn't quite get the whole effect.
Not only was Rd. 162 beautiful there were no cars. This was cycling at it's best!
I eventually had to turn on other roads. Traffic increased greatly when I got on Hwy 95. The rain was collecting on the road and splashed me whenever vehicles passed by. Yea, maybe this part wasn't as fun.
I was ready for a grilled chicken sandwich, but there was not any towns. Craigmont was off route. I stopped at the junction looking at the buildings a mile or so away. I tried to judge if any of them looked like commercial buildings. I finally decided to continue on.
Eventually it quit raining and I took off my jacket. The sky remained black and looked as if the rain could start again any minute.
I arrived at the very small town of Winchester. We were at the state park. Which was down, down, down a hill. Darn, darn, darn. I did not want to bicycle back up this in the morning with cold legs. I didn't even want to bicycle back up it this afternoon to do the grocery shopping (it was my turn to cook again). Tom and I were now cooking partners as our partners had dropped out. He and I arrived at about the same time and found our camping spot. The state park was next to a lake. The tent area was very nice and a very long ways from the showers. They were quarter showers. Carlton gave me some quarters to pay. We had quarter showers at several campgrounds. I've got to learn to not spend all of my change so I would be prepared. I stayed under the shower extra time to try and warm up. I put on my long johns and all of my dry clothes.
Tom and I cycled up to the store. It was quite small. They did have meat, but it was all frozen. We had no way of thawing the meat. I was not at all in the mood for tuna surprise *again*. We ended up buying two cans of every vegetable they had, plus some beans for protein. Onion soup mix and an onion. Minute rice to serve it over. We did not buy cookies for dessert as they were very expensive. I bought all of the bananas and yogart they had.
That was the easiest meal I made during the trip. Open all of the cans and dump in the pot with the sauted onion. I'd never fixed minute rice, but it only took a minute. We had dinner ready at the instructed hour of 7 PM. The problem was that none of the cooks had been getting dinner on time. It was usually more around 8 PM when dinner was served. There were only a couple of people in camp to eat at 7 PM. Others were up in town doing laundry or over showering. We waited about 15 minutes and then dug in. It was DELICIOUS! It must have been a very hard day. Who would have thought two cans of everything could taste so good? It was great.
This was perhaps my most favorite day, next to the day going into Jackson. Both were tough days, but full of accomplishment.
Today's ride: 53 miles (85 km)
Total: 644 miles (1,036 km)
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