Ok, today we’re going to try something old, something new. Well, ok, TECHNICALLY, it’s something new, something old, but that doesn’t … never mind!

So, today, we’re going to leave camp, ride towards town about a mile where we drop off the highway onto one of the forest roads, we’ll take that out to the Continental Divide trail, which we will pick up further West than we went the other day, eventually hitting it where we DID go the other day, and returning pretty much as we did back then. Sounds like  plan!

The ride starts out well. Most all of our rides start out well, it’s always somewhat later that the wheels come off of it to some degree or another. This ride, it’s about two miles up the Forest Service Road, about three miles from the start. The trail on the map, the trail on the GPS, AND the trail we are actually on, all diverge. What to do, what to do? Well, in the case of The Bill and Barri Show, it usually involves a lot of screaming, gesturing, name-calling … there’s a reason it’s called “The Bill and Barri Show”, folks! It’s quite entertaining if you’re a spectator, or so I surmise.

Anyway, we come to an intersection where The Bear says “No way in HELL I’m going THAT way, so tell me the right way is the other trail”. And I say “Well, you know, as luck would have it, I do believe the trail we need IS the one you’d rather take”. Or something kind of along those lines. There were probably a lot more words, and most of those probably not fit for a family discussion, but we’ll just leave it where it is. So off we go! The trail actually starts to level off – did I forget to mention that these last two miles have been nothing but climbing? I mean  NOTHING but climbing! Kind of like this:

Yeah, I know, it doesn’t look too bad in the photo. It NEVER looks real bad in the photo!

Ok, it levels off, and then … woohoo! We start descending! A long, long, FAST descent … about half way down, I start to get a bit of a knot in my stomach … any trail that goes down … has to go back up. ARGH!!! Ok, at the bottom, I catch Sonny, and ask him to take the map out of my Camelback. We start looking at it when I get a phone call. OMG! Is it the IRS? Oh, god! IT’S WORSE! It’s The Bear! “Stop! Barri, STOP where you are – Do NOT come down here” “No shit, Sherlock”, or some such answer, I don’t recall. Bottom line? Sonny and I have to climb back out (The Bear only had to go about a third of the way down to figure something was wrong and stop), and as we look at the map at the top of the hill, we hit a very hard realization – the route we need to take is the trail that The Bear absolutely, positively did NOT want to take. Oh well, she grins and BEARS it (pun fully intended), and heads on up that hill, on foot, bike in tow. We ALL walk it, it’s that bad. It looks like a riverbed, but of course, it can’t be, but it has all the rocks and ruts of a riverbed. Another mile, and it gets better, and then, at the top of the hill – WOOHOO! THE CDT!!!! The Continental Divide Trail! We made it! I was so happy, I took a photo:

The ride back is fairly uneventful, no huge climbs (or maybe we’re just used to them), and a lot of fun coasting downhill, especially the last mile, the one we did the other day. Here are a couple of shots of it:

And this one a bit later:

Today, we actually get on the highway like a real vehicle, and pedal our little hearts out down the mountain. I’m not sure how fast I was going down the hill, but when we got to the flat (which is still slightly downhill) I was doing 36 mph in my big chainring, my little feetsies going just as fast as they could! As it totally flattened out, so did my speed, dropping to 25, and then to 20, until we made it back to camp. WHEW! Another ride down!

LET’S GO TO THE SLIPPERY OTTER! Yup, a huge pizza and salad, a couple of Guinesses or more, and life is good again! And just to remind you what our new favorite place looks like:

Rest tonight, tomorrow is a travel day. We were planning on going to Sun Valley, but those plans have changed – it’s on fire! Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention? We smelled smoke all day today, as there are forest fires North of us, and the wind is blowing the smoke our way. I think they’re getting them under control, but Idaho still has some real issues. We may have to alter even more of our plans.