G.A.S.P.

I had coffee with Mark and Heather in the morning, then Mark rode with me into Sandpoint. He rode just for the exercise and to keep in shape for his own upcoming journey – a trip through Vietnam from Hanoi to Ho Chi Min City (Saigon) with his uncle in October. I had breakfast in Sandpoint, stopped at the Visitor Center, called Mom and Aunt Martha, toured the town, then stopped at Dub’s Drive-In for a quick sandwich and float before I headed toward Washington. As I was waiting for the traffic light to change on my way out, I looked across the street and there was my friend David on his way to Dub’s.

David and I rode on together to Priest River, ID where we determined that our schedules were compatible enough that we could ride the rest of the way across Washington together. We finished the day by riding to Usk, Washington where we stayed in a nice (and inexpensive) campground behind the Hotel Usk (Stan and Andrea Davey, Innkeepers). Usk wasn’t a big town, but it had a grocery store, restaurant/tavern, ice cream stand and river (Pend Oreille) to swim in – all that a bicyclist could ever hope for. The river (actually dammed to lake-size) had a lot of old pilings that were being used as seagull perches and osprey nests. We didn’t know the original purpose of these pilings, so we asked Stan (our Innkeeper) and he told us they had been used to corral logs that were floated down the river in the old days of logging in this area. The pilings had been there about 100 years and were still in good shape.