After a relatively short (36 miles) day I made it back to the car in Sandpoint! Given the fact I had a long drive ahead of me I wanted to get going early this morning. I left around 6:45 a.m. and it was great to get going early but it was cold this morning. It was around 40 degrees at the start of my ride and of course had to deal with a big hill to start the day. Wouldn't be right if I didn't have to climb a hill to start the day. I rode another backroad today and it was a fairly quiet. I did run into a couple other guys out touring around my age and they were doing the loop in the opposite direction. They were from Vancouver so I've definitely run into quite the diverse group of people on the road!
Compared to my last tour the finish of this one was entirely stress-free and easy. The highway coming into Sandpoint is very busy and there used to be a four lane bridge across the lake. They shut down the east two lanes and it's now exclusively for the use of runners, walkers and cyclists. It was great to ride in on that and then I had a bike path the rest of the way until I had to turn onto the street where my car was. Really simple and easy! Looking back it went really quick. Physically it was more challening than my last tour because of all the hills here (that's what I get for touring in the mountains) but the scenery was much better. My favorite days were days three through five and my favorite overnight town (for everything that was there) was Kaslo. My favorite place to stay was the bed and breakfast in Slocan! Such a great trip.
Here's the route today and some photos. Not too many photos since it was a shorter day and I was pushing most of the day.
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Pretty foggy around the river today.
That's the separated path going into Sandpoint.
Back to the car! It was a great ride...thanks for reading! Until the next trip...