Tourdaho: Day 5

Day 5. Based on my notes, this was the least eventful day of the entire trip. It was the only day that I didn’t take the time to jot down notes on what had happened. Strangely enough, it’s also the day that the most told tale from our journey occurred. This is the day a bear dropped out of the sky.

But first things first.

As I mentioned in Day 4, I was not much of a fan of McCall. We set our alarm early hoping to be out of town before the hordes awoke, this meant packing our things quietly in the dark and loading up without breakfast. We headed to the grocery store where we purchased some random stuff, a sweater for KB as she had lost hers on the way down from Lick Creek Summit, along with her rain jacket. We replaced the latter with a cheap, plastic emergency poncho. It hadn’t rained yet and there wasn’t any moisture in the forecast.

After our errands, we headed out of town but got distracted by a diner that looked like the best of greasy spoons. Seeing we had packed in the dark and split before the sun was up, breakfast seemed fitting and there was no line. We sat down for an egg and whatever the hell else, topped with warm coffee and a smile from the waitress. It was just what we needed and we were both happy we had stopped. 

With that said, we knew we didn’t want to be on the road out of town when it was busy, so as soon as we paid the bill, we split.

Our route put us on pavement for the next bit, we would actually ride a good chunk of road this day, probably the most of the whole trip. We headed out and after a few miles ended up on a back road that was sparsely used leaving us to pedal without much distraction. The route led us through Roseberry which, if you can stretch the meaning of the word as far as possible, is a suburb of Donnelly. KB had decided that she had brought too much shit, so we split off and headed to the post office. After unloading a good chunk of clothes and mailing it home, we returned to our route and made our way toward dirt and what was called the Eagle’s Nest.

Unlike most of the days we were out, the Eagle’s Nest was less of a summit and more of a traverse. Yes, we climbed a significant amount but it never felt like we were on top and mostly we went around a rim.

Now, Mama Bear was a bit nervous, to say the least, about losing more gear. As we began to drop back off of the Eagle’s Nest, the road was steep and bumpy. I was only 40 or 50 feet ahead of her when she yells and I stop. Her bags are starting to come off, or so she thought.

As I turn around to see what’s going on, there is a commotion to our right and this big, black thing falls from the sky. By the time I recognize it as a bear, it shakes its head and sees that I am a human. Seeing that he has just fallen out of a tree, he shakes himself off and then being startled by our presence, he launches himself off the other side of the road. We hear him crashing through trees, bushes, rocks, maybe a house or two, and then all is quiet.

Kathleen and I look at each other utterly surprised and awestruck by what has just occurred. We reattach her bag and she makes me promise to make sure that we descend together. After that bear, this became our MO. We would stick together. We were never more than a few hundred feet apart when we were in the woods.

After the Eagle’s Nest, we were back on pavement. We cruised into Cascade early to midafternoon. There was a pizza joint. We stopped and ordered. There was a boy scout group that had clearly just ended some sort of epic adventure. They were noisily tired and eating more than seemed humanly possible. We would soon learn that this area is big for the lake and the rivers. 

After eating way too much pizza and drinking enough soda to make a Mormon teenager embarrassed, we got back on the bikes and headed out of town. It was too early to stop and Cascade wasn’t a hobo friendly town, at least as far as we could tell. I mean, we didn’t even have beer with our pizza. 

Despite it being early, we had already put in more miles than our quota required. We began looking for campgrounds. Kathleen got on the googles and found a place about 11 miles away called Clear Creek Station that had a campground, showers, a bar and Uncle Bill would be waiting for us with a killer site. 

We arrived. Uncle Bill was having a beer and cigarette under a tree next to his RV. He had warned us that there were a bunch of rafters camping that night and things might get rowdy. Luckily, they weren’t there yet and we had our choice of spots. We found a table under some big trees and unloaded the bikes, put up the tent and laid down for a bit. 

The river folk (we didn’t know they were river folk at the time, but now looking back, they were definitely river folk) began to show up. Boat after boat came in, was prepped and parked and then beers cracked. There was a stream of them for several hours.

After a nap and a shower, we headed into the bar for a beer and a bite to eat. They had Goose Island IPA, just for the cyclists, and some veggies. We hung out. I got a video of KB telling me she was ready to ride the Wall of Death and then we started to meet the rafters. I don’t recall her name, but she had noticed us in the campground and introduced herself in the bar once the peeps from Boise disappeared. She was curious about us, our bikes, what the hell we were doing. We explained the lot and she told us she was going rafting and invited us to the party that was sure to happen that night. 

We finished our beers and made our way to camp. I think I bought some Jack Daniels at the convenient store, but that’s debatable. We made our way back to camp and then came our friend who insisted we come over to meet the dudes. There was meat, like more meat than I’ve seen in a hot minute, booze, dudes and almost no girls. Whiskey was passed around, we all become best friends promising to come visit and go rafting and riding and do things that none of us will ever do. And then we went to bed only to forget the promises, the names and anything that had to do with the others. We went our separate ways.

P. L. and R.