September 15, 2021
Turkeys, bats and elks......oh my!
Hell's Gate State Park to Lewiston
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This morning Don had to wait around for the RV guy to come by sometime. As he didn't have a set time, he didn't want to leave camp on a ride.
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So it was back to my single today! That was ok by me. No point in both of us sitting around.
It's much warmer in here earlier in the morning than at our last spot, so by 10 I headed off under sunny skies.
I first took the trail south along the Snake river to the end of the campground where it turned to rough gravely dirt. Ok, that wasn't going to work well, so I turned around and headed the other direction.
This was more of an exploratory ride to figure out where this trail went to. I didn't have a map but figured that it should be easy enough to follow.
Well, that wasn't exactly true! Through the state park, it wasn't signed well and I ended up on the entrance road going up to the dump station away from the river. I looked over toward the water and while I couldn't quite see the path, there were light poles every so often.
I figured that that HAD to be the trail so I finagled my way through a parking lot and eventually made my back to trail. Much better, although the surface of the path was pretty rough chip sealed asphalt or smoother pavement with annoying expansion cracks running all the way across. It was KA-THUD, Ka-THUD until I exited the park.
After I got to the actual Lewiston Levee Trail, the surface was much better. For the most part, the trail was flat except for a few spots where it dipped down under an overpass.
It was a nice morning along the water and I enjoyed the views. Lots of fishermen were out and there was a light breeze from the east which felt good as it was getting hot enough to shed my jacket.
It didn't take long to reach the confluence of the Snake River and the Clearwater River where the trail continued along the Clearwater. I kept on going until there was a fork in the trail.
Going straight along the levee it turned to gravel but the paved part dropped steeply down the side of levee into a parking lot. Okay, I'll go down where I figured the trail probably would continue from there.
But there was no trail and no signs. It looked like you would have to ride a road. Since I had no idea where to go from here, I figured this was my cue to turn around and return to camp. I'd done enough riding for today. If we ride this trail on the tandem, we'll have to get a map to better figure things out.
Back at camp, the RV guy still hadn't called or showed up. Don finally called him and made an appointment for 4ish. That left us enough time to go over to Costco which was across the river in Washington.
We were happy to see that masks were required to enter the store! Thank you Costco and the state of Washington.
Shopping done, the repair guy finally showed up and took a look at our leak. He ended up replacing a part which took until after 6 pm since he had to crawl around under the trailer which was a pretty tight fit, then go to a hardware store to find the correct repplacement fitting. Don was sure happy that someone else was doing this job!
Yea! Now we can actually hook up to water here at the campground rather than use u what's in our fresh water tank. The repair guy will come back tomorrow to check things and settle up the bill.
We ate a quick dinner and then dressed for our evening. Don had a found an Elk's lodge nearby that was having live music tonight. We hoped there some type of dance floor.
Well, the lodge had a pretty large wood parquet floor and there were a few other couples dancing to a musician called "The Singing Mailman". He was a decent singer, and had a machine that added background music along with a woman playing a bass viol.
There were only a handfull of people at the bar and eating dinner. At most on the floor there were 4 couples so we had lots of room to dance and social distance.
The music was a mix of country and pop, very danceable. Plus the guy took requests. He would have played a tango for us, but Don couldn't think of a piece that was in the guy's repertoire. Oh well, we were able to do most of the other dances we know.
It was a little exciting at one point when what looked like a bat started swooping around above us. Yup, it was definately a bat and really startled me when it dropped down and hovered by my head, eyeball to eyeball. Yikes!!! Hadn't expected that to happen! No one seemed concered, so we just continued with our dancing and who knows where the bat went to. The ceiling was pretty high in the club with large rooms.
We stayed for about 1 1/2 hours, then called it a night. It had been fun with friendly people. This lodge is quite something to see as it's perched on top of a hill with big windows overlooking the Snake and the city of Clarkston. The "Mailman" will be performing again on Friday night, so we might come back since there is no charge and we felt pretty comfortable there.
Back at camp, we both crashed. It sure had been a full day!
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Today's ride: 15 miles (24 km)
Total: 863 miles (1,389 km)
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3 years ago