September 7…. Smokin’

We headed out early this morning from Coeur d’Alene on a long (for us) four and a half hour drive, and we’re finally parked outside the west gate of Glacier National Park. So much smoke in the air from fires in Washington we can hardly even see the mountains. 😖

Coeur d’Alene is a beautiful city, most especially the older part of town down by the lake. It’s a huge lake, just winding in and out between the mountains. Susy and I spent an evening walking barefoot in a park and along the waterfront, and then on “the longest floating boardwalk in the world”. Not quite sure how that could be verified, but it was pretty long. It even had a two-story tall floating bridge over the inlet to the marina.

The park had a little trail marked out all around it, based on a children’s book about a moose and a mouse, so I felt a connection. 😉

Most of our stay in CDA, we spent catching up on “town stuff”. More clothes shopping (yuck), Walmart, some Dr stuff, and ate out several times. Had another chance for HuHot, my favorite Mongolian BBQ place.

Friday, we drove out towards Montana, taking our bikes to ride The Route of the Hiawatha, an old railroad grade turned into a bike trail. Made it out there, bought trail passes, unloaded the bikes and… realized the keys were back at the camper. 🤬🤬🤬. Fortunately, we were able to trade in our passes for the next day, so we called Friday a bust and went home for a nap. Such a hard life. 😁

Once again, Saturday drive back out to the trail after quadruple checking that we had everything we needed.

Starting down the trail, it almost immediately dives into a long tunnel. A MILE AND A HALF LONG TUNNEL!!

It was freezing cold in there and wet, and when we finally came out the other end, we were frozen and covered in mud. But add some sunshine and some pedaling and we quickly thawed out. Still covered in mud though. 😖

The trail runs 16 miles on a very slight down hill, going through 10 shorter tunnels and crossing 7 railroad bridges. Some of the bridges were over 225 ft tall!

After 16 miles, we hit the bottom end and had a choice… load our bikes on a shuttle and ride the bus back to the top, or turn around and do it all again, only uphill this time. No brainer right?? Well apparently that’s exactly right, No Brains. We turned around and started pedaling back up that hill. Thank goodness for modern technology and e-bikes. 16 more miles, 10 tunnels, and 7 bridges and we made it back to the top. Bike’s up over 635 miles now. 😁😁😁