Friday, August 07, 2009

Day 53: Idaho Falls, ID to Pocatello, ID

We started our day with a makeup miles. I hate makeup miles. You feel like you're not going anywhere at all, even though you're moving in the wrong direction. Since we'd spent the night at a Motel 6, there was no breakfast for us. Thinking that we only had seven or eight miles to ride until the gas station, I opted to wait for breakfast until our turn around point. We started the day by taking a look at the falls.

It wound up being 19 miles. Through construction. And dust.

When we arrived, we decided to spend the remainder of our lottery winnings on another ticket. We won, used it to buy another and finally lost. We took our time getting moving again. Even though we were going to finally be going the right direction again, the prospect of riding 19 more miles that should have been doe the day before wasn't very appealing. I grabbed something healthy - juice and multigrain bars. Then we got moving again.

Finally, we started feeling a little better. Only for it to start getting a little wet. We made fairly good time back to Idaho Falls though. We kept considering alternate routes to get away from the construction, but there weren't a lot of choices.

On the far side of Idaho Falls we stopped at a gas station, where we were asked for directions. We always find that a little curious.

The ride out of town wasn't very interesting. The shoulders were sufficient, traffic wasn't too heavy, there wasn't much to see. Typical Idaho.

Eventually we found our way to Blackfoot, where we found a wonderful site.

There wasn't a whole lot in Blackfoot. But there were clouds, and we were feeling kind of beat up. But when we called around we found all of the rooms were booked. Having wasted twenty minutes, we got back on the bike to try and rush to Pocatello.

Jillian started calling hotels while I was navigating, but the combination of the wind and our limited access to hotel listings made it hard. We tried the three or four hotels I'd originally identified back in Denver, but everything was booked. After a call to Jillian's mother and a plea to search for a room for us, we doubled our efforts to try and make Pocatello as quickly as possibe.

It turned out that we were trying to ride through the area right in the middle of the annual Shoshone-Bannock Indian Festival. All the hotels were booked. We did get to see some of the festival grounds while riding in Ft Hall, but for the most part I was just bitter. Jillian wanted to stop and see the 24 hour handball tournament, but I was too concerned about getting a room.

Sometime later Jillian's mother called us, having called half the hotel rooms in town. She'd found us a room at the Rodeway Inn. Unfortunately, it was a few miles out of our way. But we didn't have any other options.

Mood swings on the bike are surprising. After we'd secured a hotel room, I was in a much happier mood. Jillian, while sad she wasn't going to get to watch any sports, was also perking up. We fought with some traffic through Chubbuck, but generally had an easy ride in to town, eventually stopping at the Rodeway Inn across the street from the University.

Maybe it was because we were so happy just to have a hotel room, but the Rodeway seemed like a fantastic deal. The price was reasonable, the room was on the ground floor, and there were free cookies at night. The staff was so friendly they might have been robots. We took advantage of those before grabbing a real dinner at Elmer's Pancakes & Steakhouse. Lots of food at a fair price. Then it was back for some rest.

| posted at: 03:20 | permanent link and comments

You can view more entries using the archive links to your left or by looking at our index!