Day 14 Kootenai to Cabinet Gorge 69km

We say farewell to Paula and her lovely boys Peik, Finen and Ketil and head for Montana in high spirits. The forecast is for a hot sunny day, and we aren't disappointed, we are soon sweating and turning brown, except for Kerstin's ears, which burn and blister, she is worried she looks like Dr Spock! We are quickly rewarded for our cycling effort when we spot a big Mama moose with her little calf across the river. As we follow the bends along the edge of the huge Pend Oreille Lake, which is 1200ft deep, we continue to see plenty of natives, squirrels, turtles, geese, and a beautiful specimen of a Bald Eagle watches us from her viewing spot above the road. We stop for lunch in Clark Fork and get another invitation to stay with some Idaho locals, but we have only 8 miles between us and Montana, so we head eastwards once again. Crossing the border seems to immediately bring a size increase to just about everything, trees, mountains, trucks, it feels like we are bicycling extras in a Western movie, the background too impossibly large to be real. It also means we have come so far that we are now in a new time zone, a total of 573 miles (923km) ridden over the past 2 weeks. Feeling lucky to be in this present moment, experiencing all the detail of this slow travel, we celebrate with a cup of tea!


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