Our goal was the Wood River Trail, following the valley north from Bellevue to Ketchum, dba Sun Valley. This is another asphalt rails-to-trails and climbs about 800 feet over the 19 mile length. That works out to about 0.8% grade on average. But you all remember from Stat 101, reporting a mean without a standard deviation is a risky thing to do. That was driven home on our Wyoming ride, which had an average of about 1% as well but varied between 4% down and 6% up.
For the Wood River Trail, the average is just fine; it was pretty much 0.8 percent all the way. We barely noticed the grade coming or going.
The people of Idaho seems to have some what idiosyncratic taste in public and private art. The first two are either an astronomy lesson or a science fair project. The pizza looking thing is a picture of the sun that covered most of the 12-foot bike path. Four miles down the path was a picture of Uranus, to approximately the same scale. My attention span is too short to have seen all the other planets (plus Pluto.)
Idaho Falls was a overnight rest stop to avoid long days of driving and to help see things we didn’t come to see. Overall a pleasant surprise.
Since we were in the neighborhood, we stopped at the Peregrine Fund Center to meet some birds. It was so successful with Peregrines, which are now off the endangered list, it has been given responsibility for the California Condor. It’s making progress.
We also found a good bike trail in Boise, following the river through Garden City. Unfortunately, we didn’t bring surf boards.
I’m several states behind; I need to catch up.
