May 28, 2018
Day 10 Arco
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Arco, Idaho
We hit the 700 mark! Daily average of 70 miles.
We got up early to see what the situation was with the weather. There were thunderstorms in the forecast we didn’t exactly want to get caught in any of the craziness we encountered two days ago. We walked down to Java Hailey and had a great breakfast. We’ve determined that the rain jackets we started out in are not sufficient for downpours and/or long periods of rain. So we decided to wait until the bike shop in Hailey opened at 9:00 to see if they could help us out. We packed up gear in the meantime and kept watching the forecast. We strolled into the store and talked to the two employees. All they had was a windbreaker. They told us their store in Ketchum might have more. Yea, we’re not biking back up there. They recommended a farm supply type store about 5 miles away and even called there to make sure they were open and had something that might work for us. Even if it was a basic lightweight rain jacket, we’d be fine with that. So we loaded up and road down to the country store/gas station. All they had was 10 pound PVC dust riders for farmers. They were out of ponchos (not like that would have worked anyway.) Jon got a couple of trash bags from the employees as a worse case scenario (who hasn’t used a trash bag as a rain jacket at least once in their life?) We saw bits of clearing ahead, so we decided to push on to Arco. The rain didn’t look as bad as the forecast and it turned out we were done with the rain after about 25 miles and was intermittent at best. In fact, it cleared and warmed up enough that we packed away the wind breaker jackets we had and took off our thermal arm sleeves after 30 miles. At about the 40 mile point, we found the Carey hot spring and took a 20 minute soak. We were just on the edge of the Craters of the Moon park and the hot springs was in a lava pool. Felt so good! And as an added little bonus feature, I saw a huge snake moving its way along the lava rocks a few feet from the pool. I edged my way towards the other side of the pool, but it didn’t actually come any closer, just disappeared beneath some rocks. No rattle or anything, but it was sizable, about 1.5 inches around and 3-4 ft long. After our soak, we made our way into the park. Incredible landscape of lava fields for miles. We stopped at the visitors center which was teeming with tourists. Not surprising though, it’s a pretty cool area to see. We talked to one guy who asked about our ride and it turns out he’s originally from London Ohio. Small world. After the visitors center, we had 18 miles to go to our final stop for the day. At first we had a great tail wind and cruised along at 20+mph. And then the wind changed direction. So sad. It got worse the further we went. (Reminded me of that Paul Simon song...”the nearer your destination the more you’re slip sliding away”). We finally rolled in Arco at 5:30, known as the first town to have atomic power. The town has definitely seen better days, but we found a decent little motel with more amenities than some chain hotels at 1/2 the price. Very bright colors too! We stopped for beer at the gas station (beer kitty!) and asked about nearby restaurants. The cashier recommended the Golden West Cafe, so we went there. Quintessential American restaurant. Burgers. Fries. Chicken fried steak. White lettuce salad. But we were so hungry we really didn’t care at this point. It started raining while we were in the restaurant though, so we had to hang out a while until it let up enough for us the walk the 1/4 mile back to the motel. The sun started to emerge just after we got back and a huge rainbow stretched across the sky. Gorgeous! With that, the day is done. Two more days of riding until we get to my cousin’s house in Victor, ID!
Today's ride: 72 miles (116 km)
Total: 3,206 miles (5,160 km)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 1 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 1 |
5 years ago