Day 342
Salmon Lake
Tom woke me up in what felt like the middle of the night, camera in hand he was off to explore. We were camped besides a lake in the middle of a forest, it was beyond beautiful but my body craved one thing, sleep, so I rolled over and stayed snug as a bug in our tent. It was actually 6am and 2 hours later I was just up when Tom returned buzzing with excitement at just how darn beautiful it all was. The staff popped up to see us and check we were OK. They even gave Tom 4 dollars back as we hadn’t had the correct change to pop into the payment envelope when we arrived. Did we find everything we needed? Great place to pitch the tent, check, views, check, electric points, check, covered seating area, check, showers, check. I could go on, Tom simply calls it his favourite camp site! All for 8 dollars each!
Both somewhat tired we set off in shorts and t-shirt for the first time since Breckenridge. It was warm! The riding was easy but a fair few ups after the downs. We stopped at renovated church to eat our lunch, Kevin, a FedEx driver pulled in to check we were OK and inform us that the two girls heading to Alaska were just a day ahead of us. We may yet get to meet them! Time was getting on and we still had 35 miles to go so off we went. We had barely got going when Tom spotted some Ortlieb panniers and shouted ‘tourer’. We pulled over to the store cum café, no scones with clotted cream though, and got chatting to Rich of overlandscooter.com. He is touring on an electric scooter which hauls his trailer whilst whizzing along at speeds of up to 40 miles an hour. Now that’s an idea!
We chatted away for nearly an hour! We needed to get going, we exchanged details and wished him well. An hour later, his scooter battery recharged, Rich passed us. He was planning to head 20 miles further than us so as we neared our campsite we were somewhat surprised to see him scooting towards us. He had found himself and us a bargain. We had planned to stop at a very basic site, somewhere to pitch the tent with a bear box but no showers, running water etc. Rich had found us a site with hot showers, free coffee in the morning, by a small lake, a veranda to relax on and even better, for the price of pitching our tent we could stay in a yurt! Rich rejected the yurt in favour of his Amok, an amazing hammock but so much more. Tom and I tried it out before settling in our yurt, that fickle finger of fate had served us well tonight!
