We decided to sleep in to let ourselves truly recover from the day before and to make this an active rest day. We would pedal easy and then try to get a bit of the Dollarhide summit climb out of the way in the early evening. With the luxury of time, we hopped on our bikes and had a quick morning dip at the hot spring, refilled water, and then set out at an easy pace.
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| Drying out my bathing suit while packing up. |
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| Don't forget to take a minute to look back from whence you came... |
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| Easy riding along yet another beautiful section of river. |
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| How many scenic pictures are too many? I'll pretend this one is a picture of the nesting egrets that we saw along here. |
Even though it was hotter than normal for this part of June, I still decided to enjoy the hot springs as much as possible. Since we had so little ground to cover this day, I stopped at Preis hot spring, a roadside soaking box, to at least dip my feet in.
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| This soaking box was pretty cool, it had a wooden bench, and if you wanted to, you could submerge up to your neck in this hot spring. I opted for toes only since it was pretty hot out. |
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| Super cool dragonflies, including this one, flitted around the hot spring. |
We also took some time to stage a mini photoshoot for me since Ryan wasn't really taking pictures at all, and I wanted a few actions shots of myself. Most of my bike touring partners in the past also had cameras, so we could trade photos. This time, I was the unofficial photographer, so it was time to put Ryan to work.
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| Look at me, I'm riding a bike! |
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| Now I'm riding a bike even closer! |
We kept spinning our wheels until we found the perfect afternoon resting spot at the Warswick hot spring, which had a tiny patch of shade, big hot spring pools, streams of hot springs, as well as a cold river. Everything we needed for the afternoon. Ryan headed straight for the cold river and I jumped into the hot spring. I joined Ryan over at the river and found the perfect spot where the hot spring joined the river and sat at the junction so I could get a little of both. The tiny fish and tadpoles nibbled our toes as we relished the soothing water. Then we headed to the shade for a late lunch and a nap.
As we stretched out to rest, another bike tourist heading the opposite direction rolled in. He was riding solo and looked worse for the wear. We learned that he had never bike toured before, and this was his first one. He was halfway done, had done a lot of up and down hike-a-bike, mostly because he wasn't quite in shape and because he thought his brakes wouldn't hold up. He was happy when we told him that yes, there was a motel in Featherville, and we picked his brain about potential campsites for the climb up Dollarhide summit.
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| Soaking in the hot spring. |
We got going again once the sun didn't seem so hot, and started the climb up. We contemplated trying to get to the summit, but we were running out of daylight. Our cycling friend had told us that there was some campable areas by the bridge before the climb got steep, but that after that, there was basically nothing. So we decided to camp by the bridge over the creek so we would be able to hit the climb fresh in the morning. The only place we found was next to the road, but we figured as long as we were off the road we would be fine.
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| Our home for the night on the roadside. The upside was that we had the creek where we could filter water. The downside was there was a bit of late night traffic, including one very drunk passenger of a truck. |
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| When in Idaho... |
A few travel notes for bike tourists:
- Turns out a bit further up the climb we saw some other areas that we thought were campable. Not ideal spots, but definitely some options between the bridge and the summit. That said, we were glad to stop early and attack the rest of the climb on fresh legs and a little less food weight.
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