US and Canada Tour

Roz and Stan's big trip for 2015

Thu 11 Jun 2015

Wilderness Gateway Campground to Lochsa Lodge, Powell

Today:65km Total:901km

Gently uphill all day today so we stopped just after lunch at a lovely 'hunting lodge' style of place(in other words, wooden building with lots of animal skins and antlers all over the walls) for the afternoon and night.

We have passed a couple of areas of roadworks where only one lane is open at a time to traffic with traffic controllers stopping the traffic and letting each direction go alternately.

The first one a few days ago really stressed me out because it turned out to be several km and the traffic controllers decided that all the traffic in both directions had to wait until we had come through. I was cycling as hard as I could but there was quite a long line of frustrated drivers when I finally made it out - not a good way to make friends with car drivers.

The second one today was a completely different and very pleasant experience. There was actually plenty of room and the traffic controllers just let us go through at our own pace and ignored us. The cars had to follow a 'pilot car' very slowly through the area (unlike the rest of the day where traffic wasn't heavy but passed us at fairly high speeds and often very close to us.) so we had lovely few kms with the cars going very slowly past us with a very wide gap.

We had lots of guys cycle pass us today who are doing 'TransAm' bike race across America. There are 41 cyclists (including 2 women) competing this year.

They start at Seaside, Oregon on the west coast and cycle as fast as they can to Yorktown, Virginia on the east coast. It only costs $30 to enter the race for which they get a tracker to put on their bike that continually reports their position and there is a website that tracks the leaderboard. They have to follow a certain route but can cycle for as long as they want each day.

Most of them were cycling 16 hours to 30 hours at a time, then sometimes staying in motels, sometimes sleeping for a few hours at the side of a road or on a park bench. They stop to eat where and when they can. The winner last year finished in 20 days - the last person took 3 months (the latter is a much more sensible time to do this in!).

The lodge we stayed in was the only shop in many miles so nearly all of them stopped here - sometimes for a few cold drinks and sometimes for a meal but all of them were happy to chat. We met guys from Italy, Switzerland and lots of Americans. One guy was even riding a single speed (no gears!) bike.

This was a typical set up of what they are carrying (very little compared to us). I think this bike belonged to Andy from Switzerland (German speaking)