SCORE!

A perfect day all around! We said goodbye to our new friends, Pete and Karen, this morning. We were both going to Sandpoint, but they were following the Adventure Cycling Northern Tier, which went along the other side of the Pend Oreille (note corrected spelling) to Sandpoint. We were following the Selkirk Loop which stayed on US 2. I took this photo just before they took off.

Very nice couple. I'm glad we met them.

Annette and I took off about 9:00. It was chilly, but after the first hill, I took my leg warmers off. Today's weather was looking to be much nicer. Just across the bridge we finally saw a "Welcome to Idaho" sign.

Otherwise, how would we know if we had crossed the state line???

We next pulled off at Albeni Dam and Falls viewpoint. It was kind of a trick. There used to be falls, but the dam covered them up. So, it was really just Albeni Dam viewpoint. It should be, Albeni Dam, and Damn, No Falls! Across from the dam was were I had originally had us camping. It was good we didn't go there as we would have had to backtrack to Newport to get across the river.

The dam.

We continued riding along the hwy. There was a decent shoulder, but quite a bit of traffic. It made it hard to carry on a conversation because of the noise. But, that was okay. Annette is faster than me what with Tilmann carrying about 20 pounds more, so no conversation anyway. 

Not long after the town of Priest River, we came to Priest River Campground (USACE). We took a gander to see what it was like. It was a very nice campground that even had a swimming beach.

We had a nice conversation with the camp hosts. They were out walking their two blind dogs in strollers.

Back out on the hwy, we were still following the Pend Oreille River. It's a good size river, and really pretty.

At about 1:00, we decided we should pull off for some lunch. We found an unused little side road and fixed some gorditas. I even pulled out my chair. Annette was jealous (no, not really).

We had just a few more miles to Sandpoint. Just outside of the town, I saw a bike path going along the other side of the hwy. We crossed over and got on the path.

It took us all the way into Sandpoint. We needed to get a few groceries, so I checked to see where there was a grocery store. There was a Safeway right on the route. After Safeway, I wanted to find a bike shop to see about getting some chamois cream. I had a whole tube at home, but I didn't think I'd need it. Yes, yes I do! We went to one that was right by Safeway, but it was more of a used bike place. But, the guy directed us to Greasy Fingers (now that's a good name for a bike shop!). We found chamois cream there. We headed out of town, back on US 2. We came to an interchange. It seemed rather dangerous. Then, I spotted a bike path. It was unclear if the path went the direction we needed to go. We saw a guy riding, so we asked him if it would take us in the direction of Bonners Ferry (not that we were going all the way there today). He said to follow him, and he'd show us. It worked out great, and we bypassed all the busy interchange. At one point there was this interesting sign on the bike path.

Off camber bike path!

The bike path soon ended, and we were back on the hwy. Annette saw a tie-dye place, and wanted to go shopping.

I said okay, even though we didn't know how much further we had to go (we didn't know where we were camping as we weren't making it to Bonners Ferry tonight). It was a good stop though, because Annette got a batik "blanket/sheet", and I filled my two 2 liter platypus containers as I wasn't sure if we might be wild camping. Annette got the blanket because she has been getting cold at night. Her sleeping bag is not warm enough, even with using her liner and mine. It has been kind of cold at night. We also asked them if they knew of any camping somewhat nearby. They didn't really know, but told us there is a restaurant about 10 miles up the road, and the people there might know. So, we set off for the restaurant. About 3 miles later I saw this sign.

That definitely looked like a tent and a bicycle! I stopped Annette, and said we should go check it out. We did, and we met Kim. Her husband put the sign out mostly for motorcyclists, but they don't discriminate against cyclists. Kim said we could camp anywhere in the grass. There's water and power, and we can cook on the deck. I asked her what they charge and she said nothing. As we were walking the bikes over to the trees, Annette said, "Score!" Indeed, we did score!

Very nice place with a stable full of horses.

(Correction from yesterday's post--we did not cross the Columbia River at Usk. It was the Pend Oreille.)