Day ride to Mullan

June 17, 2023

We have thoroughly enjoyed the fellowship of staying with all of our WarmShowers hosts and hanging out with other campers in Harrison. At the same time, it is so nice to have our own space here.

Our Airbnb in Kellogg is little but does the basics well - comfortable living room, functional kitchen, dining table where I can work on the journal, good bed and places to put your stuff. We can take a break from sociability, cook our own meals and just vegetate for two nights.

Watched our first movie of the trip last night - Top Gun: Maverick. Jerry Bruckheimer’s visual effects look great on the big screen here.

We have enough leftover grilled pork from last night for another meal tonight. I’m thinking Asian stir-fry.

I keep hearing about the Route of the Hiawatha which starts 18 miles uphill from Mullan. It does sound so cool. I took another look at the logistics of adding it on. Besides riding a lot of gravel on our recumbents, it would mean staying here just one night, carrying our baggage up there with us and probably adding on another night somewhere else. We'll just have to come back for the Hiawatha Trail another time with our gravel bikes. For today, we get to ride without all the stuff up to the eastern end of the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes in Mullan.

The breeze is pushing the clouds around so it’s alternately gloomy and sunny this morning. The first 12 miles up to Wallace are slightly uphill.

There must be some great Mtb trails around here. We are passing a lot of people coming the other way on mountain bikes. Love to see those full-face helmets.

This antique handcar looks like it would be really hard to move

The yellow flowers look Ike Hawkweed; orange ones could be Fox and Cubs. Pretty combination, whatever they are.

The Coeur d’Alene River rushing down alongside us.

We've been running parallel to I-90, then ride under it in Wallace quite a ways. It's a lot of concrete.

Longest underpass we have ever seen on a bike

The grade picks up a bit past Wallace and the action on the trail picks up as well. There are many more groups and families out riding, perhaps starting from Wallace.

Next we come to a big truck parked on the path with a lot of drunk people hanging on to it. A guy tells us they are doing a fundraiser for the troops somewhere. They dropped a ball on the path near Mullan and are taking bets on how long it takes to roll to Wallace. No indication of what happens if the ball rolls off the trail into the river. We politely decline to join the party and walk around the revelers.

The trail's end at Mullan is rather anticlimactic. There's a trailhead sign, that's about it.

There's just enough of a downhill grade back to Wallace to make it great fun, until we get back to the party truck and walk around it again.

Spectators gathering on the bridge, to watch other partiers, I guess

We skip the giant underpass back in Wallace and take the road around it into town for lunch at the Tap Room. There's a carnival in town today and big noisy rides are set up in the streets.

This air compressor powered rock drills and other mining machinery in the 1920s

Back in Kellogg we stop by the market and pick up some frozen Asian vegetables, rice and teriyaki sauce mix to go with our leftover pork. It makes a pretty tasty stir fry, dressed up with cashews from the snack bag.

I have some time tonight to catch up with other journals besides this one, which has kept me occupied until this morning when I worked the backlog due to zero days. It's so much easier and more fun to write in the moment than to conjure up what I was thinking days ago. I hope to keep it going, but we may be off the grid for a couple days. Could be a challenge.

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Today's ride: 38 miles (61 km)
Total: 645 miles (1,038 km)

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