Day 14 - Salmon, ID to Logan, UT

Today we followed the Salmon River from our hotel’s backyard to its headwaters in the mountains.

With a crisp 54F degrees to our departure we hit the road at 8am taking highway 93 out of town. For the next 3 hours we had nonstop scenery and ranked as one of our top 10 scenic rides ever.

Every curve in the road had something new to offer and the mountain landscape constantly changed.

It was around this time that Michele thinks she saw an eagle—big white head and dark gray body. She was so consumed in looking at it that she forgot to take a photo!

For the most part we had the roads to ourselves. Around 10:30am the Sawtooth Mountains flanked us.

We turned onto scenic byway 75 to continue following the Salmon River.

We rode through Clayton, UT. The population sign indicated that only 7 people lived there. This is the smallest town we’ve ridden through on our various trips. Michele wasn’t able to get a picture of the sign and Rob wasn’t able to turn around to go back because the town was too small to do a U-turn in.  ;-)

We ascended the mountain and were treated with twisty roads. At the summit of one of the mountain peaks we had a great view of the Sawtooth Mountain range and valley. The Sawtooth mountains are peaked in white granite so their color is different from other mountains we’ve seen.

On our descent the loose gravel sign made us nervous, but in reality it was freshly paved asphalt making our ride smooth as butter!

After a few more miles we were in Sun Valley, Idaho, where we stopped for lunch at a café. By this time it was getting toasty, but we figured we could ride 60 miles and take another break on the road.


The landscape changed dramatically from this point onward. Very flat and arid with sagebrush plants everywhere.

In a small town we were slowed by an oversized load. Whatever it was, it had a lot of tires.

We stopped for a gas break around 2pm and were HOT! The cool wraps went on and Michele poured cold bottled water on her head and arms. We got on interstate 84 and the temp was 93. For about 2 hours we rode through huge grazing land then farms and ranches.  

 

Finally we got a bit of cloud cover and a respite from the heat at 90 degrees. Michele said just that small change had a huge effect on her heat level. She also reports that it was so hot and dry during this portion of today’s ride that her lips were desiccated like a dried apricot.

Around 4:30pm we approached Logan, UT, our destination for the day.

Rob scrubbed the bug splats off the Wing before heading to dinner.

We walked over to a small Italian restaurant. We just made it in the door when the skies opened up and a cool rain poured down. Our short walk back to the B&B was in a light rain. The entire western sky was a bright orange. We hope that the “red” sky at night will be a riders delight tomorrow as we are heading for the mountains of north eastern Utah and southwestern Wyoming. We hope to finish the day off with a run through the Flaming Gorge.