Monday June 17, 2002 -- Coleville WA to Western MT
"Do the great thing while it is still small!
Everything heavy on earth begins as something light.
Everything great on earth begins as something small.
Therefore: if the Man of Calling never does anything great,
then he can complete his great deeds.
Whosoever makes promises lightly,
surely he will not keep them.
He who takes many things lightly,
surely he will have much difficulty.
Therefore: if the Man of Calling gives consideration to difficulties
he shall never have difficulties."
-- Lao Tzu, "Tao Te Ching"
I leave Coleville at 5:35 AM. I don't see any sign of the apple guy or much of anyone else except for some garbage men on their early morning rounds. It's too early for any of the businesses to be open, so I breakfast on a couple of Clif Bars from my stash of supplies.
Just outside of Coleville I hit road construction on Hwy 20. I ride for about an hour on gravel. While the road isn't too rough, the logging trucks kick up a lot of dust. Eventually a water truck comes by, sprinkling the gravel to keep the dust down. The driver is nice enough to shut off the water on my side as he comes past so he doesn't soak me and the dampened road makes for much nicer riding.
I speed up once I'm past the gravel section and while there still is some climbing the weather is nice and the scenery is still beautiful. At 9:00 AM I stop at a little intersection called Tiger. Tiger does have some public restrooms and I fill up my bottles here. A very important part of my daily routine is making sure I fill the water bottles at every opportunity.
I follow the road south out of Tiger, along the river and into the wind. As I'm heading down toward Newport, I see where the Flowery Trail Road connects in to Hwy 20 and I see a sign saying "Road Closed: Use Detour." Originally Mark and I had planned on riding a route that included the Flowery Trail Road, so it's probably just as well that we changed the plan to stick with Hwy 20.
At 12:35 PM I stop at the Safeway in Newport WA, right on the Idaho border. I load up on supplies and cross over into Idaho.
I'm on Hwy 2 now, the road I'll pretty much be on for the rest of the trip. There's some road construction in Idaho but the traffic keeps moving pretty well and the state of Idaho seems to favor the hiring of cute flag girls so I can't grumble too much about any delays. I stop in Sand Point and make a call to Jon Muellner, who is updating my progress on the Seattle International Randonneurs website.
At 4:20 PM I stop in Elmira for a snack. I call home and chat with my son Peter, telling him I'll probably make it to Montana by nightfall. The wind is still from the south but now I'm headed mostly north so I'm making good progress.
At 7:30 PM I cross into Montana. I switch my watch over to Mountain Time so it's now 8:30 PM. There's a pay phone literally right on the ID/MT border so I stop and call Christine, letting her know that I'll be camping as soon as I find a good spot.
I roll down the road and the signs tell me that this is National Forest Land. At 8:45 PM I find a nice spot just off the road and, unlike last night, this location has rocks and trees and actually looks like a good place to camp. It looks like it might rain, so in addition to the bivy, I string up the tarp to form a lean-to. I'm not too far away from the road, so I use my earplugs to mask the road noise. I jot down the day's notes and go to sleep.