Sunday August 15th
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Sad day, great day, ever had them? Sunday was that type of day. Colleen, Mike and Nancy all had to leave early in the morning to get stuff packed up and to make flights out of Boseman, almost 3 hours away. Mike will be missed, he took a lot of ribbing during the trip and provided some real camaraderie for John and I. Of course I will miss my wife of almost 28 years, boy was it great being with her again.
John and I left about 9am and made great time getting to the Montana-Idaho border, Red Rocks Pass. Initially we were going to make it a light day and only go as far as Big Springs, ID, 33 miles away, but our legs felt strong so we modified the plan and decided to head to Ashton, ID 82 miles from Lakeview, MT. We pull into Big Springs about 1:30pm, fueled up with a hamburger and fries and started to do the long trail south to Warm River park and then to Ashton. I decided to get a little kicker of ice cream treats at the convenience store across the street because there was nothing for 40 miles of converted railroad track-to-trail. Standing in the parking lot eating my ice cream and it happened, a pick-up truck pulled up with none other than a good friend of my son Robert's - Jeff McPherson and his girl cute girl friend Laura! I could not have been more surprised and deeply honored. Jeff and Laura had spent all morning leaving early from Boseman tracking us down. They drove almost 2 hours just to get close to where we were and then because our route took us through gates closed to vehicles they had to drive all over the countryside trying to catch us, asking people if they had seen guys traveling on bikes with trailers. Ok, ok I admit it, man-down, I cried and hugged Jeff over come with emotion, so deeply touched by him and Laura going so far out to see us. They also brought great deli sandwiches, beer, bananas, salad and more. We could only take the sandwiches and bananas. The sandwiches it turned out were dinner, as by the time we finally pulled into Ashton, the restaurants were closing, so a bag of chips and some beer and those wonderful sandwiches were devoured.
The trail down from Big Springs is notorious for soft lava sand and I now know why. Turning onto the trail we immediately hit 3-6 inches of sand that our tires sank into making it hard to steer and keep your balance. There were ATV's all over the place, built to enjoy such terrain. After turning a few hundred yards onto the trail we would be on for roughly 40 miles, it happened, I crashed for the first time on the trip. This wasn't a "Mike Weinberger no-speed fall", this was a helmet first, slam into the lava sand fall. Had to take my helmet off to get all the peebles out. Luckily no harm done, minor scraps and back on the bike. The ride was hard because we had to pedal and steer so as not to get thrown sideways by the sand. Four hours later around 7pm we pulled off that trail happy to back on firm ground.
