Day 8

I was remiss yesterday in not reporting that a bear cub had crossed the road in front of Cary and Alea as they were closing in on the campground on their bicycles.  They opted to wait a while before proceeding (not wanting to get between Momma Bear and her cub), and they eventually made it to camp safe and sound.  There has been no shortage of wildlife sightings lately, including turkeys, deer and coyotes.

We're less than 10 miles west of Sandpoint, ID right now, after 58 miles of rolling hills along our route to Round Lake State Park.  Last night we managed to reserve the last available site here, so there was no anxiety about wondering if we'd find an available site tonight (Saturday).

We've decided to attempt to cover the 230 miles or so to Whitefish, MT over the next four days.  To do that, the three of us will attempt to split up an 80 mile day tomorrow, leaving us with three remaining days of roughly 50 miles each.  That does a number of things for us.  First, it makes an easier target for Cary's friend Joanie to find her, and increases our odds of a decent place for a celebratory parting ceremony when Cary leaves us for her return trip home.  Second, it sets things up for Alea and I to cross through Glacier National Park on Thursday, which we originally thought we'd be doing on Saturday.  Since we will be ahead of schedule, we'll either reduce our mileage for a while or take a day or two off (perhaps in Canada), in order to get back on to our original schedule.

We opted for piling on the long miles tomorrow (Sunday), as by Monday the highs are forecast to be in the 90s, and will continue to heat up as the week progresses.  Our strategy for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday will be to crank out the miles fairly early in the morning to avoid the worst of the heat.

With Cary planning on rendezvousing with her friend Joanie on Wednesday, we'll be losing our riding partner.  We couldn't have asked for a better travel companion, but her life back in Seattle is beckoning (and we suspect her husband Ken may be running low on home baked cookies and pies, so his situation may be getting close to critical by now).

I suspect we'll make less frequent blog posts from here on out, though whenever we stop at a campsite where we can gain access to the internet I'll update our GPS track on the map at the top of our blog.  The reality is that once we cross the Continental Divide in Glacier National Park that we will rapidly get into fairly monotonous prairie landscapes for the few weeks that follow, until we reach the eastern part of North Dakota.