Sunday, we headed out from Clarkston about 7am. First thing, we saw an Osprey catch a fish as we crossed the Snake River. I love the opportunity to see so much wildlife I wouldn’t notice if we were in a car.

This was the day we were riding along the Clearwater River Highway. We decided to ride until we came to Orofino, ID, where we would stop for breakfast and coffee. We stopped at the Ponderosa Restaurant. It was a busy day, and service was pretty slow. This put us back on the road later than we’d hoped, and the heat was already rapidly rising. We got back on the road by about 9:30am. It is always wonderful to ride along a river – a forested one, especially in the heat, is especially lovely. The river is accurately named.

We continued on toward Lolo Pass. We had reservations at the Lolo Pass Hot Springs Lodge – and as the day had heated up rapidly, we were really looking forward to a soak in the springs and a cool dip in the pool.

As we approached the lodge, we heard what sounded like booming – there were crowds of young people crossing the highway. We had to wait for about half an hour before we could check in – there was one person cleaning the rooms, a very nice man. When we finally talked to him, he said the rooms wouldn’t be ready for an hour. He encouraged us to go next door and have some lunch, which we decided would be a good plan. He told us there was a “Pirate Festival” across the street, which was actually more of a rave than a festival. As he described it, an opportunity for kids to wander around the grounds with nearly no clothing and take Ecstasy. An accurate observation, and I still have no idea what it had to do with pirates. (A pirate festival – at Lolo Pass? The sea is nowhere in sight. Hmm….)

So, we walked over to the restaurant/bar, where we were informed by the waitress that the only food we could procure was the buffet they’d set up for the ravers – which consisted of burgers, pulled pork sandwiches, macaroni salad, chips, etc. – for $7. We were also informed that the restaurant would not be serving its regular menu until the next afternoon (Monday). The ravers were all over the hot tubs and the pool and were wandering all over the property, and back and forth across the highway. The booming continued. We decided this was not our idea of a relaxing stay. The lodge was very apologetic and refunded our money.

We headed for Missoula forthwith, and stayed at the Holiday Inn – where we finally found a pool and a decent restaurant. That town has some absolutely gorgeous Victorian buildings – downtown is quite charming. I highly recommend it! It’s also bicycle friendly, but we were shocked to observe that the bicyclists all obeyed the traffic laws. No running red lights or going the wrong way down one-way streets – unlike another city we know quite well.