2013 Adventure Ride, Day 3 (July 22)

  As we emerged from the tents we found deer hoof prints everywhere and the deer had left.  Day 3 had begun...I was groggy and hungry!

My McGyver cooking setup...

   I had brought a bit of oatmeal for breakfasts in the morning, but try as I may I could just barely get it down the gullet.  It was quite disgusting...no amount of cinnamon, sugar, and raisins could get me to eat that again.  I decided I was going to replace it with soda or whiskey in the side bag as soon as we made it back to civilization.  I was thankful I still had a few oatmeal raisin cookies (thanks again, honey!).
  The previous day I noticed there was a sign for a lookout just four miles further up the road.  That night I stated that it would be really cool to get some sunrise pictures from the lookout, so we decided to go check it out before continuing up the motorway the following day.  Here's a video of the ride up to the lookout the next morning: Lolo Motorway 4 (lookout).
 

Scott at the lookout

Scotty made it to the top first (surprised?), but no Mike.  We figured he forgot about the planned trip to the overlook so he took off to meet up with his pops.  I stuck behind to take more pics...

Panoramic pic of the lookout

Killer on the lookout

Enterprise awaiting the return of landing party...

The Blazer

  We razzed Mike a bit for not remembering the lookout and moved on up the Lolo Motorway.  The road was good....for a while.  Then it turned into a rocky and rutted SOB with the occasional ATV and truck traffic.
  The path is riddled with these signs:

  There were quite a few sections that were just plain rocky, while other sections were almost like highways.  As we came to this sign I knew we were in for a rocky section:

...and boy was it rocky, holy moly.  There was one section in particular that particularly sticks out  in my mind.  The section was a pretty smooth one so I might have been going a bit fast, and then in a little dip in the trail that was a little covered with bushes was a section with baby-sized boulders.  I wowed 'er up as much as I could but still managed to blast through the rocks, which pin-balled my but all the way over to the edge.  It all happened so fast I don't know how I didn't end up going off the road (and frankly don't care)...I'm just happy I stayed on course.  This was only one of many instances where the stiffer springs in the front and rear of the bike was a godsend...
  After the rocky section, it turned into almost a highway!  Well, some of it did anyway.  Poor Mike got nailed by another stingy-thingy too.  Here's a few videos of this section:

Lolo Motorway Video 10 

Lolo Motorway Video 11

Lolo Motorway Video 12 

 Man it was nice with purdy views like this one:

  We finally made it to Gass Creek, which was a bit of a milestone for me.  See, this is as far as we got coming from the other direction two years ago.  We ran into multiple snow drifts and decided to head back.  So to me this mean that I had finally ridden the entire Lolo Motorway.  Pretty cool...

While we were setting there, Scott noticed a leak in his gas tank that was coming from a little valve on the bottom of the tank.  The team mechanic was all over it...

  They got the leak fixed (or at least stopped) and we headed onward.  This is the spot we were planning on staying the night before, but we were glad we didn't.  There was already a trailer in the spot and not too many other places to camp.  Not to mention that would have been a bit of a ride late in the day.  It all worked out.

We made our way into Kooskia for a bite to eat and hit the first bar we could find for an ice cold beer and set our next plans.  The next leg was to continue down highway 13 and head east on highway 14 toward Elk City.  We had heard that this highway was an awesome ride and there had to be a campsite somewhere along the river.
  To the surprise of Scott and I, Mike was so hungry he helped himself to a $0.50 hot dog at the bar.  Scott and I decided to hold out for real food, which we were told was just down the road.  After the beer we headed in search of said 'real food'.  And let me tell you, we walked the entire damn length of that hot-ass town to find only one diner.  That was okay though, the diner had AC and cold water...and sorta good food.  I'm sure the patrons weren't too impressed when we sat down and started shedding clothing, including hot stinky boots!  After eating and cooling off as much as we could we walked to the supermarket for some steaks before we got back on the road again.
  Highway 14 is all it's cracked up to be - the road is curvy and the scenery is pretty.  We found ourselves an uninhibited camp site and set up camp...

  The first dip in the river is ALWAYS the worst, so it's best just to get it over with.  After that initial dip the river was really inviting.  There's nothing like sitting in a river drinking a bit-o-wiky.

  As we set to cooking dinner a car came rolling into camp and a couple got out to scope the place out.  They asked us how long we were planning on staying and explained that they wanted to reserve a spot for their family that weekend.  In Mike's good nature he let them set a tent up right next to his.  And with his good nature comes a little good ribbing like 'well, what's in it for us?!'...in which they had the reply '...well, we have a camp chair ya'll can use.  It's broken but...'.  After they left we were enjoying the extra chair around the fire and just thinking...'wow....really?'.  The whole situation just had to make us giggle.
  We cooked up our steaks and in typical Mike fashion decided to mix it up with a dehydrated beef stroganoff meal.  I have to say, that was mighty damn tasty.  Hat's off to master combiner Mike!  Later that night we were about to head to bed when a car stopped at the entrance of the camping area and didn't move for a bit of time.  That got us a bit worried and we went into ninja-vanish mode.  Little did they know that we were ready with lead for whatever they were planning.  It turns out they went away after about 20 minutes which I chalked up to one of the longest pisses I've seen.  It must have been a real drunk dude on his way home...or another bar!  You can never be too careful or assuming in the woods...some crazy shizzle happens out there...
 

Day 3 GPS Track

Day 3 Elevation Curve