Ride 'em, cowboy

Hee haw, my two-day delay landed me in Colville, WA, on the very weekend of their annual professional rodeo.  Even as I cycled into town Saturday evening, it was hard not to notice the country & western music coming full blast from the direction of the county fairgrounds.  I just figured it was a Saturday night C&W concert (not bad, either) for the locals.  I was dead tired. It was already after 7:00 pm, so I figured I would spend my first night in Colville in a comfortable motel and then the second night camping at the county fairgrounds.

The next day I stayed in the motel as long as possible, asking for a late checkout.  They had free wireless Internet access and I had a difficult time weaning myself from the comfort of a motel room and an Internet connection.  Probably minutes before they sent the cops to evict me, I left the room at 1:30 pm and decided to check out the town of Colville, WA.  (By the way, the first syllable rhymes with "call", not "coal".)

First I headed to the county fairgrounds to check out the camping situation.  Whoa!  What's all the commotion?  The annual rodeo was in full swing.  I just parked my bike and started meandering around.  I'm sure I really fit in with my bicycle helmet, jersey, and Lycra shorts.  I really needed cowboy boots with a little cow on them, chaps, a checked shirt, and a cowboy hat, but it was Sunday and the stores were closed.

After getting my fill of the sights and sounds of the rodeo, I went back into town to get a sandwich and let the hoopla die down.  I had already spotted what looked like a good camping spot, but there were horse trailers all over the place and you couldn't access it.  When I went back that Sunday night around 7:00 pm, the horses, cowboys, and most of the horse manure were gone.  The camp site met all my basic requirements: hot water, showers, flush toilets, grass and picnic table.  All for five bucks.

 

Memories of past trips

The next couple of days were easy cycling, lots of rolling terrain, but no major passes.  The scenery is pretty without being spectacular.  The first day of rolling hills tired me out, because it was a maximum of a couple of minutes uphill, followed by a couple of minutes downhill.  There was no "cruising" in the same gear for even a short period: I was changing gears constantly.  On the second and third days, the hills stretched out more, which I find much more enjoyable.  The uphill stretches were longer, but the reward on the downhill side lasted long enough to make it all  worthwhile.  Wheee!

As my cyclometer recorded 500 miles exactly, I found myself right in front of Spud's Bar and Grill in downtown Sandpoint, Idaho.  [OK, I confess: I had to circle the parking lot a couple of times.]  It was about 3:00 pm, and like most days this trip, I hadn't eaten any lunch.  (In Montana, there are 50 mile stretches with no services, not even water.)  I parked my bike, walked in and checked the place out.  There was a great deck in the back overlooking one of the marinas on Lake Pend Oreille, and one of the tables was obviously meant for me.

Besides, I had to celebrate an anniversary.  Twenty-five years ago, either in June or July, my friend Jim and I started our first-ever bicycle tour right from Sandpoint, Idaho.  We had driven from San Francisco, and had worked out a 300-mile loop through the Panhandle section of Idaho.  Although there were a lot of rolling hills, there was nothing monstrous.  Unlike California, where everything dries out in the summer, here everything was green.  Lakes, rivers, and swimming holes abounded.  I decided then and there that bicycle touring would be on my agenda for almost every summer vacation.  For the most part, I think it has been.

I didn't spend more than an hour or so in Sandpoint.  Since I was still a couple of days behind schedule, I stuck to my guns and pushed on to Clark Fork, ID, a little town of 530 people.  The last half of the riding day was never out of sight of beautiful Lake Pend Oreille. 

I found a very nice place to stay, the Clark Fork Lodge.  Lucky, too, because it was the only place to stay.  I walked down the street for dinner where I had the first hamburger steak I had eaten in many, many years.  It was fixed just the way I remember it from when I was a kid: covered with sautéed mushrooms and onions, the meat cooked well done, with a mound of mashed potatoes covered with canned brown gravy.  But guess what? After a 65 mile day, it was absolutely delicious.

And of course, if you want to see all the photos, click away.