QUICK STATS

We left Laura and Joseph's house around 9am and headed 7 miles up the road to buy groceries and some Washington souvenirs.  Our errands took us a lot longer than we though, but after about 2 hours, we finally had our groceries and our Washington and Idaho pins and patches.

We crossed over from Washington to Idaho, and ate lunch at this cool park called Locomotive park.  The park has some real train cars in it, and they are pretty impressive to see up close. 

We met Nick, a local bee keeper, while we were in the park.  We were talking about our route with him, and he warned us that Route 12 was very narrow and twisty.  He also told us about a gas station that sells Bahama Mama's - a german sausage version of a pig in a blanket - and said we should definitely stop and have some. 

We headed down 12 a bit, and it was fine - not narrow, not twisty.  We stopped to go to the bathroom, and several people wanted to talk with us about our trip.  When we told them we were headed East on 12, they all said it was very narrow and twisty and warned us to be very careful.  This happened over and over again throughout the day.  It made us a little nervous, but the alternative route was over big hills/mountains with lots of big trucks.  That didn't sound any better, so we decided to stick with Route 12.

A few more miles down 12, and it happened...the nice road with nice shoulders suddenly changed.  The shoulders almost totally disappeared, and it turned into a 2-lane highway that twisted and turned as it followed the Clearwater river into the mountains.  We held our breath as we got into the lane of traffic, but it turned out that road was fairly empty.  Occasionally there would be big logging trucks that would come barreling down the road, but they were all headed west.  We were headed east, and our lane hardly ever had any trucks in it, so there was really not much to be worried about in the eastbound lane.  Phew!

We eventually found the gas station with the Bahama Mama's that Nick had recommended, and we stopped to have one, but they were all sold out. 

The lady told us they couldn't ever keep enough Bahama Mama's in stock - they were always sold out it seemed!  We settled for a plain german sausage.  It was yummy and full of fat and calories - our new best friends.  We've got our eyes out for Bahama Mama's if we see any in the future though!

After we left, I spotted a sign that was of particular interest to me since my maiden name is Peck.

Our next stop was Orofino.  Since we didn't have a map, we needed to ask around to figure out where to spend the night.  We heard we could camp beside the road in 7 miles, or there was an actual campsite in 25 miles.  We had already gone 41 miles and it was nearly 4p...but we didn't want to just pitch our tent beside the road, so we decided to put in another 25 miles.   AAANNNDDD, we did it!

I was totally amazed!  We pulled off 25 more miles in like an hour and a half!  We were going 14+ mph the whole time!  We're rock stars!!  I'm so proud of us!  I never would've though we could have sustained that kind of pace on such a narrow twisty road in traffic.  It was great! 

The downside is that when we got to Kamaih, the city the camground was in, we were really, really tired.  We started looking around for the campsite and found out it was another 3 miles down the road.  We had already gone 70 miles, so 3 more miles sounded more like 100 more miles to us.  But we pedaled on, and we finally made it to Long Camp RV park.  We decided that if this RV park didn't accept tent campers (some don't), we would beg!  We didn't want to ride any more.  We were all ready to get on our hands and knees when we saw a sign that said "Tent Camping: $10".  Yay!

And they even had showers!  Double happiness! 

We had a delicious dinner of noodles with tomato and basil sauce, fig newtons, Wheat Thins, and Willy Wonka gummy candies.  After dinner, we were getting ready for bed when the camp director, Chris, came over.  He's getting ready to move to Hawaii, and he told us all about Hawaii's mini-climates and their rock-bottom home prices.  He and his wife just bought a house on a 1-acre lot on Hawaii's big island for $45k!!  Woah! 

So now Nathan and I are thinking about moving to Hawaii when the bike trip's done...  :-)

It started sprinkling as we went to bed...hope everything stays dry!  

Here's a picture from a pretty spot today.

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