ALI and I pulled away from the White Pines Motel and road one more time through Orofino… Dang! This certainly has been an interesting visit… Not entirely unlike some of those before, but certainly unique in its own way, too… like every visit anywhere always is… I couldn’t shake a feeling I’ve been having since the beginning of this road trip, though… I am such a fortunate guy!!!
When I’d awakened that morning, I had no plan at all about what might come next, or even in which direction we might head… Heck, I hadn’t even planned on leaving that morning in the first place! Just prior to taking my seat upon our girl, I had scanned the atlas to see what might be an option… or two…
The first thing that caught my eye was a road that pulled off north from HWY 12 between Orofino and Lewiston… We had ridden by that turn off on the way there two days before. I’d never ridden that road, and it did appear to have potential… It was only then that a ‘plan’ finally began to emerge…
We arrived at the turn, and it just felt so right… like dipping that gal at the end of a song on the dance floor the other night… Yeah, it could end in disaster, but… sometimes you just have to do a thing anyway and hope for the best… We made the turn…
The temperature had been creeping up each of the last several days, so naturally I expected more of the same. I hadn’t needed that extra sweatshirt or my chaps up to and including that turn, but… Soon the road grade took a decided turn upward, and all of that began to change… I figured we’d cross over a pass and start back down soon, so I elected not to add any layers.
We did reach the top of the grade that had taken us up perhaps 1500 ft. or more, and it was getting downright chilly… cold to be more precise! We didn’t drop back down the other side of the mountain though! We had arrived on a plateau that we would discover runs for some 70 miles or so!!! It didn’t take me as long this time to reconsider apparel options… and to make an adjustment…
I didn’t add the Gerbings though… at least not then. In time I had to make that adjustment too. Since the sun does work sometimes, but it does not other times up here, I’ve ruled out government employ… I’m now thinking there must be a strong union that represents it up here, and they undoubtedly have some rigid work rules that involve altitude…
Another lush forest here and there, with much cleared farm land in between. Nice setting, interesting hamlets, decent road both the surface and the curves, and those curves were quite nice at the ascent and descent onto and down from that plateau. Plus, all that and not a cloud in the sky… well, unless you count my breath whenever we stopped!
I did stop for a non-wardrobe adjustment break… hot chocolate and a honey bun, and a few minutes to stretch my legs… ALI was good to go, so nothing she needed… I do think I heard her murmur, though, when I stroked her tank and mumbled sweet nothings to her. She doesn’t mind PDAs at all…
We stayed up there until just outside St. Maries, when the road finally began a long descent. We found our way around and to the east of Coeur d’ Alene where we would jump on I-90 to find our next road… At the last stop, I’d scoped out the atlas again, and another nostalgia opportunity had caught my eye. Lincoln, MT.
Before getting on the super-slab, though, I topped off ALI’s tank, and spotted a café a hundred yards or so away. I decided to take on some fuel for myself, too… They served breakfast all day, so… you guessed it. The taters were actually good and the bacon was really good. The rest was as usual… good, too.
We made it to St. Regis, MT, just over the state line, and I decided to call it a night… I got a room, rode down the street for some dinner, then returned to study the atlas again…
I wasn’t particularly interested in returning to Lincoln, it’s just that I couldn’t come up with anything else, and we were near. My memory of that place had been of a good time, but I also recalled me having to leave there in a bit of a hurry because of misunderstandings stemming from a casual encounter I’d had with someone, who apparently didn’t get the part about me not looking for a relationship! I was banking on not running into that person, or at least not being recognized after eight or nine years more or less… Come to think of it, there had been dancing involved on that occasion, too…
The exit I’d chosen for a motel stop, or the one I lucked onto, turned out to be the very one I needed to take to make the short jog up to HWY 200 that would take us all the way to Lincoln… if I didn’t change my mind in the meantime… I didn’t…
I started off wearing all my cold weather gear the following morning, including my Gerbings. Not as a precaution either. When I’d first walked outside that morning, there was a rather impressive layer of frost on ALI’s cover and the windshields of all the cars around her! Nope, no indecision or hesitation this time!
It is so true that you can never go back… Much cooler this time, and nobody was out seeking action at any of the several local pubs. The next morning was the official opening of the hunting season in the back country, so the town was filled almost to the limit with hunters… who all went to bed early so they could be out in the woods before daylight…
I got one of the last rooms left in that town, after having been turned away at the first two motels I tried… Yep, I was indeed starting to get nervous! I walked next door to the Bushwhacker Saloon and Casino, had a Bushwhacker Burger and a couple of cool ones, then called it a night… You could hear my echo in there when I said good night to the bartender… Oh well, at least I didn’t get ‘caught’… Of course, I didn’t get out on a dance floor, either… Nope, nothing at all to yodel about here this time, but then that’s just the way things go sometimes.