Day 83 McCall to Riggins

Tuesday 10th August
Daily mileage 50miles Average Speed 14.7mph Ride Time 3hr23min
Total Mileage 3361

Last night we sat in the house in the dark watching a massive electric storm that seemed to go on for hours. There were sheets and forks of lightening that lit up the whole sky and we had the best viewing platform to see it. We helped ourselves to some breakfast as our hosts were enjoying a lay in then we hit the road at 8am when it was cloudy and cold. There was a short climb on highway 55 then the most amazing steep descent with sharp corners. It was difficult to pull the brakes hard enough as our hands had frozen from the wind chill and for a while we regretted sending our winter gloves home.

We rolled into New Meadows after 15 miles and had a subway and lots of coffee to warm up. From here we headed north on highway 95 and was pleased to see a slightly wider hard shoulder and over the moon when we started descending again continuously all the way past Pollock to Riggins 35 miles later! Wow, that was some scenic long gradual downhill, it was awesome! With massive mountains all around us we just kept rolling and rolling down approximately 4,000 ft!

On the way down we came across 4 cycle tourers climbing up the hill and we stopped for a chat. We felt bad for them knowing that they had to go up what we had just come down. We had a short stop in a rest area where we chatted to a guy who had just been huckleberry picking in the wilderness area with his dog duke. We also stopped for a photo on the 45th parallel rd which is half way between the North Pole and the Equator which was quite cool.
The last few miles into Riggins the wind picked up and was blowing strong into our face along with a big black cloud lurking over the mountain in front of us. So we decided to pull into the RV park and set up tent on the Salmon River edge. We dipped our feet in then relaxed as the wind battered the tent and we got an early night as we have a nasty feeling we have to climb tomorrow!