Glacier - Day 3

Day 3

Rawlins, WY to Boise, ID: over 600 miles.

After only one day on the road with us we had successfully converted Jason to the ‘ways of the biker’ as you can tell by his ‘doo rag’. He wore it proudly. This is the day when we’d part with Jason and he’d head back to Colorado Springs and then on to Lubbock, while we braved new frontier scooting broad canvasses of nothingness in Wyoming to find more of the same in Idaho. Both of those states can be so gorgeous and yet so barren.

We loaded up the bikes and headed south on the main drag through town to pick up I80, this is where we went west and Jason headed south. We wished him well and twisted the throttle and joined the throng of 18 wheelers barreling through the desolate country side. The speed limit is posted as 75, but it seems most considered that the minimum limit and not the maximum limit.

We didn’t get too far when the rain started falling on us. Not having dressed for rain I immediately looked for cover and saw we just passed an exit ramp and overpass. I quickly signaled and made a U-turn onto the on-ramp and headed down to the overpass so we could have a dry place to change. About the time we got changed and back on the road the rain had stopped, but it was a bit cool so the extra gear was welcome.

We didn’t spend too much time on the interstate as we took highway 30 north and headed to Idaho. Still the country side was barren and dry with rogue patches of farmland lightly scattered in the small towns and along the rivers.

This was a day of mainly traveling from point A to Point B. We had a long way to go and needing to get to Boise to be ready for the next leg. We did get the mandatory state sign pictures:

When we got to Idaho Falls the temperature had climbed to 98º and we were looking for a way to cool off. Pulled off and got gas and saw a little fast food place called the Artic Circle. When it’s almost 100º outside a place called the Artic Circle sounds like the answer. Wasn’t as cool as the name implied and they pretty much served regular fare… chicken and burgers.

After that I dressed for warm weather by dousing my extra bandanas with water and laying them inside my riding jacket. Evaporation can be a ‘cool’ thing when it’s happening close to your body. Everything was dry within an hour so it didn’t last as long as I wanted, but was nice when it was working.

After hours on the road we finally made it to Boise and exited on a supposedly loop around the city. We decided we wanted to get close to Highway 55 so that we’d have an easy exit from the city in the morning. The trick was to find 55. Our maps were pretty useless. Kevin decided to seek some assistance from a local and at the next stop light, pulled up his face guard and asked the young lady in the vehicle next to him if she knew where 55 was. ‘Bout scared her to death.. I mean what would you think if you were sitting there your vehicle in the dark and this ‘thing’ pictured below starts speaking to you?

However, after she regained her composure she did have the right directions and we followed those to 55. However, there did not appear to be any Hotels on this side of town. So we pretty much backtracked to where we were before and took a few extra turns and found a local hotel that had an opening for the night. It was pretty late by this time and we’d been on the road for about 12 hours, so we’d pretty much settle for anything. And we did, we settled for the first one we found.

We knew tomorrow was going to be a great day as we were headed north and then east out of Boise to Montana by way of Lolo Pass. We'd heard great things about this route and were looking forward to the actual experience.