indyfabz

I am planning a loop out of Boise for next spring. On the off chance that I may be planning to pass through that same area, can you tell me where this is?

indyfabz

+1. During my second tour, which was solo, I was camping at the American Legion Park in Wisdom, MT. It was evening. I was sitting on the table inside the enclosed picnic shelter (lots of mosquitoes in that town) reading a book when a woman in a small RV drives into the park, circles around looks in my direction then leaves. Maybe 15 min. later a man/child tandem rides past the park towards town.


A few days later I met the woman in the laundry room of the Dillon KOA. She told me she was driving SAG in an RV for her husband and daughter. I asked her if she had stayed in Wisdom and told her I had camped there. She said she had driven into a park and decided she didn't want to stay there because she saw some "weird guy" so she left and they ended up sleeping in the RV in town. I told her that weird guy was me. Open mouth, insert foot. That wasn't the only time I got the sense that people looked at me a little suspiciously because I was a single guy in my 30s.

Aidoneus

Yeah, reading a book in America? Clearly some kind of commie/NAZI/pervert!

indyfabz

And it was the way she said it. I really wanted to say something not so nice, but instead I sat back and enjoyed her "I didn't mean it like that" nonsense.


Interestingly, I was a spit spooked by the place because it's outside of town and set pretty far back from the road. I had polished off a bottle of wine and decided to put the bottle next to the door (which opened in) as a makeshift alarm in case anyone entered while I was asleep. (I pitched my tent inside as extra protection against bugs.) When I woke up saw that the bottle had been knocked over, meaning some had opened the door. I never heard a thing. As I was leaving town I saw several people sleeping by the side of the road. I stopped for breakfast eighteen miles down the road in Jackson. There were several groups of "hippies" hanging around. One girl had a sign that read "ass for gas." Someone in town told me that they were people trying to get to the Rainbow Festival.


Four days later I was camping at a private campground a bit north/west of Earthquake Lake. I woke up early to find two "vagabonds" (probably more festival goers) sleeping under the overhang of a horse trailer at the campground. Next to them was an empty bottle of wine and the containers for my leftover chips and salsa they had stolen from the picnic table next to my tent and had polished off. That was supposed to have been my breakfast. I wanted to beat the snot out of them but didn't want the hassle that would have come with it.


And to think that woman was worried about me and my book.

Doug64

Carey, ID, Just a little west of Crater of the Moons National Monument.

From my wife's Journal.
"We stopped for the day in Carey. The only place to stay turned out to be the Community Park and adjacent Blaine County fairgrounds. We had the park to ourselves during the heat of the afternoon."

A 4H horse show might not be a problem, but you might want to check the dates the County Fair runs. We did this ride in 2007.

indyfabz

Thanks. My planned loop includes a night in Arco and then one at COTM. Plan to pass through Carey after that on my way to Twin Falls, but it's nice to know about options because there are some lonely stretches of road out there.

Did you ride through the Mud Lake/Terrenton area? I found a fish access site on the lake that allows camping. Problem is that my current schedule has me there on a Sunday. All the services in town are closed. May have to skip the day off in Salmon so I can make it there by Saturday.

Doug64

No, We were following Highway US 20, and followed it from Carey to Idaho Falls where it turned northeast toward Yellowstone NP. We also spent a night in Arco.

From what you described it sounds like it should be a good tour. I like that kind of country.

indyfabz

Rough sketch is Boise-Idaho City-Lowman-Stanley-Challis-Salmon-Leadore-Mud City-Arco-Craters of the Moon-Twin Falls-Glenns Ferry/Three Island Crossing S.P.-Bruneau Dunes S.P.-Boise. Likely a rest day in there somewhere.

Sharpshin

Whose? Yours, or hers?

A stranger is an unknown quantity, especially an adult male. The average American sees many, many more unstable homeless people than they do bicycle tourists.

indyfabz

So when you see an adult male reading a book in, say, a park you conclude that they are weird? The fact is that I was doing nothing out of the ordinary. I would fully understand if she had been alone and didn't feel comfortable staying, but that's not what happened. She made an assessment of my character based on no information other than I was a lone man. I feel sorry for people whose minds work that way. Anyway, it was their loss. The moon setting behind the mountains made for a beautiful view.

Sharpshin

Hang on, you yourself said you were "a bit spooked by the place" and that lots of Rainbow Gathering people were bumming through town.

Most damning from here at the other end of the net was that you were "tempted to say something not so nice" to that lady some time later (oh, the horror! 😮 )

I myself prefer to avoid spandex bicycle shorts like plague because of possible reduction in testosterone levels, but all that aside I woulda apologized to the lady for making her feel uneasy and taken the whole episode as valuable insight as to how I might be viewed by the general public.

Others' MMV

bbbean 

If it's not an area where I normally see adult males reading books, then I conclude that whatever he is doing is out of the norm. Whether that is a good, bad, or neutral thing depends on a whole range of other factors, but there's nothing wrong with a cautious woman deciding to stop elsewhere because something out of the ordinary was going on.

I wouldn't obsess on it one way or the other.

skookum

Yeah, I apologize any time I get caught reading a book in public.

Aidoneus

I read a blog at crazyguyonabike in which the writer reported that a woman was initially afraid of him at a trail head because he had a beard and was wearing a flannel shirt.

skookum

She's scared of hipsters?

Aidoneus

“I was a little worried when you first approached me,” she says, straddling her bike in her dress, “with your beard and that flannel shirt, alone on a bridge. But then I saw your smile and I knew you were going to be alright.”—from Northern Blues by Ryan Conaughty

robow

It likely wouldn't be necessary if you weren't caught holding the reading material vertically

djb

Oooooohh, I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay, I sleep all night and I work all day......

djb

the scared lady story makes me recall on a trip down the west coast, circa 94 maybe, my first time in California. At a red light, in a very friendly Canadian way, I politely asked the lady in the car next to me about directions, and I'll always remember the look of horror on her face and her closing her window in a mad panic as if I had tried to reach in her and grab her purse.

I'm telling you Yanks, this was and still is, a real example of how your society is, with a fear or this and that, haves and have nots, guns and etc. I have never in my life in Canada had such a reaction from someone, even to this day, 25 years later, and to me it is a good example of how your society "overall" (a big wide statement I know) is very different with the fear of crime etc.

I mean, in this example, it was mid day, I was neat enough looking, on a fully loaded touring bike, a skinny lad who looks younger than I was, yet her reaction was as if I was some drug addled looking homeless person leaning into her personal space, and I had kept my distance.

the other thing I recall from that trip was visiting a friend near San Fran, and going for a day ride with one of his friends. The poor fellow took me up into some hills and on the way back, misjudged a corner and went off in the gravel into the ditch, cutting his arm badly in a few places. We were able to ride back to his place, where he then spent time on the phone calling various clinics or hospitals, finding out which one would accept his insurance, all the while bleeding onto his couch a bit.
To a Canadian, this was just completely wacky, and a good example of how you guys really have a whacked society in some way. Sorry to be so blunt, but the rest of the world with universal health care just shake our heads at your health care and guns thing.

phew, all this from remembering that poor terrified lady in her car of the polite Canadian bicycling tourist on a sunny mid day with lots of people around.

jon c. 

It's a fear that in general has grown throughout my life, ironically while actual crime rates decreased.

Doug64

David,

I tend to agree with you.

djb

guess I should apologize, yet another American horrible mass shooting in the news and the "its people who kill people, not guns" view had me react.

bbbean 

In a post about how open minded and trusting Canucks are, you wrote:

So, in essence, you used one encounter to justify a bias against the 299,999,999+ Americans who didn't appear afraid of you.

Got it.

Yes, I know you have had dozens/hundreds, thousands of encounters that justify your bias and this was just one example, etc. FWIW, I've run into rude/dishonest Canadians, too (and know some who have bad experience with the health care system). But I'm not citing those encounters as examples of the typical Canadian.

Aidoneus

djb

you're absolutely right, it's just an observation I've had a few times and am comparing experiences, too broad a brush stroke I know.
I'll just refer to my earlier post again.