Day 3 Jordan Valley, OR to Idaho Falls, ID

This day started out a bit slow.  We were tired after the intense riding yesterday.  Plus, I needed to do a partial cleaning of the bike and trailer to remove the worst of the dust and dirt from the gravel ride yesterday.  As an indication of how dirty the bike & trailer were, it took 3 rinsings to clean the gravel out of the wash bucket!

We refueled next door at the Shell station and headed north on US95 where the GPS took us on a wonderful set of farm roads to our next DamTour stop:  Swan Falls. 

Here we're entering Idaho.

I would note that the last 2 miles are now chip sealed with marble sized rocks.  Grrr.  But we're experienced gravel riders!

Swan Falls is a very old dam built in 1901 to serve the gold mining town of Silver City.  It also provided power for an electric powered ferry.  See the pictures below for some history about the dam.

We enjoyed a nice picnic lunch at the dam's day use park. 

It's not too bad of a view from the picnic area.

During our lunch a little critter came out of hiding to feast on the green grass near us.  It was over a foot long without the tail.

Leaving the dam, we we guided through many more farm roads to intercept I-84 eastbound for our next destination:  Idaho Falls where we had made arrangements to spend the night with a friend we met earlier in the summer who had stayed with us in Seattle.

The ride east on I-84 was hot and consumated at 75mph which really cut the gas mileage down to the low 30's.  We stopped for fuel east of Burley and met a fellow who was trailering his GL1200A back to Houston after riding 6k miles in Alaska out of Seattle.  He was all smiles and the bike was quite dirty.  We also chatted with a HD rider who was on his way to Sturgis.  His  bike had one of the few mascots we saw on HD's:















We completed the ride by riding up I-15 where we found Edward's place.  We couldn't find anyone home so we started trying to get an internet connection, when Edward popped out of the house.  He had  been in the basement and didn't hear us.  We enjoyed a nice reunion, and he pointed us to downtown so we  could get something to eat.  We walked the 6 blocks to the downtown core (pretty deserted except for 4 Chinese restaurants.  We chose the Happy Chinese one and enjoyed a very nice dinner although the service was abysmal.

We walked back to Edward's and found a WIFI  connection where we checked email.  Back at Edward's, we set up our "tent" for the night (he had just moved in and had no furniture but we had our inflatable mattress and satin sheet liners.  We chatted some more, and got things in order for tomorrow's ride to Cody, WY.

TRIP Statistics:  400 miles
GAME SPOTTED:  1 badger