We woke up at the Country Inn just south of Sandpoint and headed for breakfast down the road. We ate at a little cafe, Katie, TJ and I had another batch of really bad pancakes. It was a slow morning, and the wind was against us pretty heavily. We were still dragging pretty good from the day before.

We usually don't mind stopping for road construction flagmen, but today we got eaten by skeeters when we stopped! Then she made us wait even longer while the cars behind us passed.....as if we didn't know how to ride in traffic.

All of the Western states seem to be ruining their roads. They have really nice blacktop roads, and they are covering them up with this chip-seal stuff that is horrid for biking, and sounds terrible on car tires. Meanwhile, some roads are crumbling while they cover up their best roads with this chip-seal. I don't understand. The parts where they miss the chip-seal are far superior to the parts they have resurfaced.

The skies looked pretty bad when we stopped at safeway for lunch in Newport. Without many other stopping points for many miles, we decided to call it half-a-rest-day and got a motel. As soon as we did, it started raining. In the 60F weather, riding in the rain gets cold fast.

The chinese food from the Newport Safeway was the worst food of the trip. Katie and I couldn't even eat ours.

We took advantage of our early stopping time, and did some chores. Laura patched her tubes, katie wrote some post cards, I shaved the wooly-mammoth face, we waterproofed the girls tent, and we sorted through our gear searching for some stuff to send home before the mountains. We sent home almost 20 pounds of stuff!

We went to a mexican place for dinner. It was pretty bad, and expensive. Roger was sick afterwards.

The only entertainment provided by the town was the traffic speed meter that TJ ran past...he got it up to 15mph, well under the limit.

Laura lost blisters today, so she has to carry the game until the next state border again (now 3 ones in a row for her)....lucky for her we cross back into Idaho for a few miles in the morning, so she gets 1 more chance to pass the game onto another person. She is winning anyway. Tomorrow we go into Washington permanantly, with 1 more day of flat to enjoy before the mountains begin.

The speed limits here in Idaho and Washington are sure appriciated. It is amazing how much better the drivers are when you cross the arbitrary line. Also, we are now seeing traffic cops again. Montana is chaos on the roads.

33 miles (1670 total)