Around 11am, we finally got our butts in gear after our luxurious breakfast and rode five miles down the hill to Stanley. Travis was defeated by the sun and bought a merino wool long sleeved shirt for relief. Though we had just eaten enormous breakfasts a few hours before, we split a huckleberry milkshake and had lunch at the Bakery Cafe, which had been recommended to us be several people. We switched out our books at the used book fundraiser outside the visitors center, rode out of town and immediately stopped to fuss with my leaky tire.
This time we super glued a piece of rubber to the outside of the puncture, which slowed the leaking a little more but not completely.
We continued on through some more burnt out forests, and had to reroute because the ATV trail we were following was completely impassable from fallen trees.
I'm really curious about the Forest Service's management practices out here.
Though we started pretty late in the day, we still put in a good 30 miles on some valley dirt roads. There were some questionable directions listed on the map.
Which led to some questionable routes.
Finally, we called it a day in a meadow with the Sawtooths shooting up in the distance.
It was next to old "Kelly Creek", which was really a pasture drainage ditch that had a dozen worms swimming in it. Haha I sound really whiney, honestly I'm just glad we had water and a pump. An unexpected phenomenon we are experiencing here in the snow melt zone is mosquito swarms. We've been plagued by them since coming up into the mountains. Like I've said, Western mosquitoes don't really bite, and they're super slow and easy to swat. But there are thousands of them. They're hanging out in the puddles that form where the snow piles are melting, and they drive me crazy. Doesn't Idaho know I'm on vacation FROM FLORIDA????
Then, in a sudden change of events, in the morning we woke up it was so cold that there was frost on our tent! There was ice in the pot of water we left out from the night before! MAKE UP YOUR MIND, IDAHO.
We got off to a slow start in the cold and were about to leave when all of a sudden we turned around and there was an entire herd of elk traveling past!!
There were little baby elks!!
The baby elks make a hilariously pathetic bleating noise when they call to Mama.
Okay, Idaho, thanks for making it an epic morning.