The rest of Idaho

Friday, June 29: We had a short day of 38-40 miles, so to give us something to do, the staff organized a scavenger hunt calling for us to collect about a dozen items along the way from Twin Falls to Burling. Soon after leaving the hotel, we had a side stop at Shoshone Falls, quite an impressive waterfall in the Snake River. We had a short windy descent down to the lookout, and then had to ascend back to the main road where we began to look for the scavenger items including a piece of broken fan belt, a church key, and a sample of American Repillas tyrus (which we had a heck of a time identifying, even on the internet, but heard through the grapevine was a piece of tire tread shed onto the rode by a passing truck). We elected to collect a sample of each of the items by shooting pictures of them, then making them into a slide show. Allison and the rider we chose to team up with that day for the ride and scavenger hunt (Ralph, from Columbus, Oh) were really adept in organizing the the presentation for the contest which took place at dinner. For example, one item was to identify the governor of the state of Idaho, a man named Butch Otter; we discovered this fact by talking to an older generation, hearing aide-wearing customer of Subway where we dined for lunch. We had earlier in the day taken a picture of Ernst flexing his arm muscles (he's a Swiss who now resides in Loveland, Co and still has a significant accent that resembles Schwartzenegger), and the slide first asked, "who's the governor of Idaho,"then shows Ernst, "the governator;"followed by a slide of the real governor complete with the American flag behind him. Though Allison spent a ton of time on our presentation, the judges didn't see the genious behind it all, and we lost (we was robbed).

Saturday was an 110 mile ride to Blackfoot. Sounds like a lot of miles, but we had a good following wind and took the Miller train- there were seven of us riding together in a line, which makes the riding easier, but that didn't stop us from packing in the calories. The best was stopping in a small town of Aberdeen where we not only got huge portions of great ice cream in waffle cones, but seven of 'em cost eight bucks. Lunch was @100 miles at a 50's style diner where the waiter was also the grill chef and we all had burgers with all the toppings and fries. Dinner was catered and excellent, and breakfast was at a place called the Schilling House, a 120 year old residence converted to a restaurant serving great food; if you ever make it to Blackfoot, Idaho, we heartily recommend it. Today, Sunday, was a 34 mile hop to Idaho Falls, a mormon stronghold where they roll up the streets on sabbath and, after eating an walking around town a bit (and getting our fix again of ice cream), we still had to wait an hour and a half until our rooms were ready. Tomorrow, we have a tough ride over the Tetons into Jackson Hole.