Kooskia to Wilderness Gateway campground (Clearwater National Forest, ID)

(Ridden August 5th). Via Hwy 12. 51.6 miles.

It finally cooled off today. The skies were partly cloudy and we enjoyed a nice breeze (even though it was a headwind) as we rode along the Clearwater River (the South Fork this time) from Kooskia to Lowell. Just before we reached Lowell, which is the last place to buy food and supplies for the next 66 miles,* we heard thunder rumbling. Just after we pulled into the cafe there, the skies opened up and it poured for about 20 minutes. We felt lucky we had avoided the rain, and even luckier when we later learned there had been a hail storm earlier this morning with hail stones nearly golf ball-sized. Ouch!

After the skies cleared, we made our way out of Lowell along the Lochsa (pronounced "lock suh")River. What a beautiful place! Lewis and Clark explored here extensively and now I can understand why they raved about it. Hopefully the pictures give you some idea what I am talking about.
The only negative to riding along the Lochsa is that the road through the river canyon (US12)carries quite a bit of truck traffic. And I mean gigantic trucks - many of them of the tandem axle type - carrying logs, construction material and equipment. To add to the problem for cyclists, US12 presently has no paved shoulder and winds around, up and down the canyon. The truckers are aware that the road has a lot of bicyclists on it (it is part of the 30-year old TransAmerica route) and are generally good about sharing the pavement. Still, it can be nerve-wracking at times. We pulled off the roadway several times to let a line of trucks and RVs pass, something I almost never have had to do in many years of riding bikes.

There is a road construction project underway to add a 3 foot paved shoulder specifically to address this problem. This currently involves several sections of one-lane over a 23-mile segment from Syringa northeast. Traffic going either way has to stop for 10-15 minutes sometimes while the road crew lets the oncoming traffic through. You might think that we were unhappy with these repeated stops, but they actually turned out great for us. The flaggers all waived us right to the front of the line and were great to chat with. They were also very helpful regarding campsites and other information. And they let bicycles go first. That allowed us, once we received the "green light," to get through the one-lane section without any other vehicle trying to squeeze by us. Once we reached the two-lane section we would then pull over and let all of the other stopped traffic go by. By that time the road crew had again closed the road to traffic going our direction and we were able to ride for up the 30 minutes at a time without seeing another vehicle going the same way. It was almost as though we were back on county roads in the Midwest, except that instead of cornfields and rusting farm equipment we were looking at a spectacular river canyon. And since the only significant access to Hwy 12 is at Lowell, once traffic was halted in the construction zone the effect continued even after we exited the construction zone. So we continued to follow the same pattern - we'd pull over to let a stream of traffic go by, then ride for up to 1/2 an hour without a care. At one point a family of wild turkeys ran across the road in front of us, so clearly the wildlife enjoyed the break too.**
*For this reason we are carrying a lot of additional food and water today, including a cooler with at least 25 pounds of ice, cheese, sausage, etc., in it. We decided not to carry cooking gear so our camping meals are all cold, although we were able to grill some hot dogs over the fire pit the night we camped in Hells Canyon.

**We saw a couple of wild chickens (grouse?) running into the brush near our campsite. Had we been able to catch them we might be eating a little better tonight.