Day 8: Hells Canyon to Council, ID

63 miles
4024 feet of elevation gain

Well, we've officially left Oregon behind and are in Idaho. There won't be any photos today since I'm updating this from the Council Public Library. Council's a pretty small town, population 800 or something like that, but they're letting us park for free at their courthouse and we didn't feel like going any further, so here we are. It's actually pretty cute here and while Jim and Dad didn't find any popcorn poppers at the thrift store we did find some good deals on books both there and at the library. I love buying books. I really should stop, I have so many to read that I just didn't get through in the last four years, but when they're 25-99 cents per book how can you resist?

Today I felt rather wimpy. Don't know why. Yesterday was relatively easy and we got lots of rest last night (although Jim decided to switch to Idaho time a day early and was up cooking breakfast at like 5:30 Oregon time - Mazie was quite annoyed). We started the day riding up out of the canyon with a headwind. Great. We had like 3 breaks in the first 18 miles, one of which was for a second breakfast since Dad was really hungry. After second breakfast we hit the big hill. It was really big and steep and tiring. Everything today was tiring. We actually stopped about 20 miles before our original plan, and we'll just have to make those miles up tomorrow. Jim thinks we're trying to eat our way through Idaho, because we made a second stop for food at Cambridge after our downhill. Usually we just make a sandwich in the RV, and with all our snacks we're fine, but Dad really wanted a hamburger. It was a good hamburger, probably fresh beef from all of the ranches in the area. We kept getting passed by cow and horse trailers. Apparently no one in this area believes in buying small, fuel efficient vehicles.

We never really entered the main part of Hells Canyon, but we did ride along the snake for awhile and saw some wildlife. When we first started out there were deer just standing there watching us on the other side of the road. Then we saw a mountain sheep way up in the hills. I'd been watching for them, but was expecting something white and this one was brown. That brings the animal count to: butterflies, deer, mountain sheep, squirrels, birds, heron, giant grasshoppers, squished snakes, that's all I can think of right now.

Hopefully we'll be back up to speed tomorrow. I don't know what happened, I just didn't feel like riding long distance today, which is a problem since we still have a long ways and lots of hills to cover. I'll just have to get over it. It was a weird day and a good thing we stopped when we did or we would have been soaked again. Oh yeah, we also decided to stop because Dad had another flat. The count is 2 flats and 2 additional ruined tubes (all Dad) - we're going to have to restock tomorrow. Hope everyone at home is doing well.