Sandpoint, ID

Note: I posted about the day off in Whitefish, MT. Please sift back through to find it.

The ride from Libby, MT to Sandpoint, ID was more of the same. For the beginning of the day we rode along the Kootenai River. About 11 miles into the ride, a fair amount of us stopped to take a look at the Kootenai Falls and a Swinging Bridge. It involved a little bit of an easy hike, but it was well worth it, especially to see the falls, the swinging bridge seemed kind of a gimmick to me.

I rode the rest of the day by myself mostly. I learned from the day before that if I wanted to take in the scenery around, I'd have to ride by myself. We finally crossed the state line and entered Idaho. Just as exciting, we entered the Pacific time zone. I never fully understood before, but I now sympathize with my friends from school who spent their four years trying to time their phone calls with friends and family back home, the three-hour time difference is quite the pain.

Since it was an 85 mile day, we had two lunches. At lunch 1, mile 40, we ran out of peanut butter, never a good thing, but we had bananas so it kind of evened out. The second lunch was set at mile 65, but at mile 55 we passed through Booner's Ferry, where I stopped off at a cafe to get an iced chai and fill my camelbak with ice. It was a hot day and I was starting to feel the sun. Also, I planned to fill up on water there (the main purpose of lunch 2 is more for water/break than food) and just skip lunch 2 since I was feeling good and would rather keep moving to get myself as quickly out of the heat as possible.

Booner's Ferry is right along a river, so we had an amazing 6% grade downhill for 2 miles to get to town, but that means we had a tough climb on the way out. Totally worth it though. From Booner's Ferry to Sandpoint, I just moved, averaging about 19/20.

Since I gained an hour and was in the middle of the group that day, I decided to spend a fair amount of time at the library. Well, that's a lie, I missed the last turn to get to the church and accidentally found the library. Whatever the case, the library is nice, with at least 30 public computers and 4 racks filled with magazines.

While at the library, I did some research on Sandpoint, since I hadn't seen their downtown yet. I was relieved to find out that Sandpoint is the headquarters of Coldwater Creek and their flagship store is on the main street. While upscale women's apparel geared toward the working crowd doesn't directly concern me, it does indirectly mean that there's probably a lot of other stuff going on for it. For instance, during our stay here, there's a music festival going on and a rodeo.

For dinner, the church left us burritos. They tasted like mush on the inside, not a good mush, but an average mush. For the evening, a bunch of people headed over for the music festival along the lake. Ziggy Marley was the headlining act. I decided to go to the movies with Lindsey and Joy to see Tropic Thunder. The movie itself didn't matter so much, but we wanted to get away for a bit and just laugh. In my thoughts, Tropic Thunder is the same as Balls of Fury, just with a different plot driving the story that leads to a remote outpost in the Southeast Asian jungle where people are held captive and need to be rescued. But, Robert Downey Jr. is amazing in his role.

The movie theater is a two-mile ride away, not a big deal. Well, at least with daylight. On the way back, it was dark and though we had our rear red flashing tailights, we only had my headlamp to lead the way. So, I wore it around my helmet and led the way back, being sure to be very careful with voice signals since we couldn't see much. Good thing no one ran over the roadkill deer on the side of the road.

Lots of thing to be excited for, a new state, a new timezone, a build day and most importantly, two nights sleeping in the same spot.