Today was a great day on the bike. We rode 90 miles from Sandpoint ID and crossed the state border into Montana to reach our destination of Thompson Falls. Ever mile of the ride was full of amazing scenery, gorgeous mountains covered in dense forest and on some the peaks were still a little white with snow. The beginning of the ride was along a lake that formed from a melting glacier during the ice age, the mechanic at the bike shop suggested we read the info sign at one of the turn outs to lear more. Apparently in the ice age this lake was originally a 3,500 ft tall glacial Dam that rose 2,400 ft above the current lake level, it was insane to imagine what that looked like as we followed the road along the edge if the lake foe a while. I rode with Scott and Brian (aka Bott) who I have not had the chance to ride with yet. Because i was racked for bike problems yesterday I was feeling great but the two of them were feeling the aches and soreness from the day before so I was pulling for easily a majority of the ride but it went by so quick. Our rack point was 80 by 1 but we crushed it no problem, my bike computer ran out of battery so I was flying blind on speed and distance, we stopped at a crew stop at mile 70 and I was in disbelief we were at 70 miles already, i thought the crew was messing with us. We ended up getting to lodging by 2:30ish Mountain time which was only 30 min passed pur rack time because of the time change which is very confusing and we got 2 more time changes ahead of us.
We are staying at the high school in town and because of an event in the gym we are just sleeping in the hallways which is kind of entertaining, just seeing a school hallway full of bags and blow up mattresses but a floor is a floor so we are just fine. Before our programming since we had extra time we went down to actually check out Thompson Falls which is not a waterfall anymore but a big damn, it was a beautiful view of the river and surrounding mountains from the dam overlook. Our friendship visit was also in the high school, the Chamber of Commerce and the committee on special needs came, it was very low key, we had a few individuals come as well as their moms. They were all on a Special Olympics team together and a good one too, lots of medals to brag about in track and throwing events, it was awesome. The mom of the guy, Justin, who I spent a lot of time talking with had no idea about the Journey of Hope and they have cone through here for 10 years apparently, when she was thanking us for what we were doing she got very emotional it meant so much to her and it gave me the shivers just to see that, I gave her a card so she can check out the push america site and buy a shirt because she wanted one so bad and I hope she will read my blog too. Her son Justin shared a similar situation as our friend Bobby from Sandpoint, Justin fell 200ft in a climbing accident and was dead for a while and then left in a comma, doctors told her to pull the plug but she refused and she was able to get her son back and was so thankful for that. Justin was a joy though, loves superman and we never learned exactly why because he kept it a secret but he was all smiles the whole time.
After dinner a few of us walked to "downtown" Thompson Falls which is a strip of a couple dozen shops on a street just to relax and grab a milk shake but we all need to rest up for the 105 miles and an epic climb tomorrow. Also looking forward to tomorrow to see some big horn sheep. However these sheep pose an interesting safety concern because they are known to be around the road and get in the way and try to ram cars, well bikes have just a bit less protection from big horn sheep so we are waiting to see what the crew has planned for a little extra safety precautions for us in that area, nonetheless I am excited to see some more wildlw, we so a bunch of deer around town today.
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