Actually just stupid - Day 13, Lewiston to Kooskia

I’ve already left Missoula as I write this, but I’ll try to fill in the important bits.

First off, after finishing my previous entry, I checked in with the New Yorkers about where they were staying in Lewiston. They discovered a family friend in town and said I could camp in their yard, which was great – the only catch was that they were something like 600 feet above the actual town, and I had just bought a bunch of apple juice as a surprise for the others. (Gifts work differently on the trail.)

Our hosts politely offered to pick me up in their truck, but I rode anyway since I expected the ride would take distance off my route. I made it, ate their pizza, used their shower and laundry, petted their dog, and went to sleep. In the morning, my knees were killing me. The Lewis and Clark map that I’m following provided a couple route choices, one with 4,000 ft of climbing and the other with no climbs but more distance. I expected that the flat option would be better for my knees, but again there was a catch – the flat option had a note saying “We don’t recommend this, but we listed it because it’s closer to Lewis and Clark’s original route”. The New Yorkers assured me that they checked it out on Google Earth and it looked great, so I headed that way.

As it turned out, the pretty-looking flat option was a highway with zero shoulder, blind corners, and many fast-moving logging trucks. The worst of it was at the end of the ride, where I spent about 15 miles hiding in ditches until traffic was clear then madly sprinting until I had some distance between me and the last blind corner. To keep me from going insane, I composed a speed metal song in my head about my situation, which included the phrases “this is the stupidest thing I have ever done” and “Paul Bunyan and the logging gods, plaid-clad and hard-working, who sleep all night and work all day and are OK, please send your blue ox to protect me”. Note: everything I know about lumberjacks came from Monty Python and roadside depictions of Paul Bunyan.

The adrenaline got me to our chosen KOA campground by Kooskia at 1 or 2 PM, even though I was certain I had spent at least three days dodging large trucks today. The KOA staff were very nice and let me use the pool and WiFi while waiting for Ethan, our only KOA member, to arrive and check in. Since the New Yorkers were heavier and slower than me, it would be much harder for them to use the hide-sprint technique, so it only took about an hour for me to decide that they must be dead. I used the pool, which apparently interrupted two teenage girls having a very important conversation. They stared at me until I left. I then spent the next couple hours asking eastbound arrivals about any corpses or bikes they might have seen on the highway. After that, the next two hours were spent trying to decide how to contact their family and, worse, how to explain their deaths here. I decided to just unfriend them, delete all references to them, and act confused if anyone asked about them. Around 7 PM, though, they finally rode in and we camped for the night.

Here's a post-apocalyptic abandoned gas station between Lewiston and Orofino. Unfortunately a chalk hopscotch drawn on the ground didn't come out, the juxtaposition added a lot in person:



Here are some pictures from the campsite -- some chickens I befriended, and Ethan and Jon doing the same with some ducks: