MOONBEAMS 2024 PAGE 2

I was so happy that Susan had someone who wanted to go fly fishing! She and Linda M took off for a lake near the town of Grangerville just a few miles north of us. And Susan caught a fish!!!

This meant I was on my own for the first part of my day, so of course that would be bike riding ;’). There are not many roads out of here that are good for biking so I did the same routes I have done a few times, scouting for something for a photo.

I love old farm buildings. Enlarging this photo shows the patina of the old wood.

Susan reminds me that we had seen this herd of horses last year, but I only vaguely recall that. It was such a treat to come upon them this morning. There were so many that I could not get them all in a photo.

I rode farther up the road than Susan and I had ridden the day before, until I got to the start of the switchbacks we would be riding the next day on “Just For The Hill Of It”. I will save this part for that ride.

From this spot there are beautiful views of the mountains in all directions.

Getting closer to camp on the way back I took yet another photo of the bridge from the other side of the river.

I saw that there are actually homes along the river.

Back at camp everyone was doing their thing and I took a nap. Susan attended a talk about salmon that a local fisherman gave to the women. She returned to our site shortly after I was done with my nap and said she was exhausted and took her own nap ;’).

We did need our rest for the Hills ride the next day.

And then came the next day and we were off for the hills! Our friends had the cheering section going strong and got our photos as we passed them at the ride start. Susan is emphatically telling them something – maybe about coming for the picnic lunch for a donation to the fundraiser.

We wished someone had taken a picture of our loud, encouraging cheering squad.

We rode the 2 miles to the ride start to check in, pick up our tee shirts and pin on our numbers. The volunteer workers for this ride remembered us from last year. At first I was a little surprised by that BUT – we are the only two eBikers again, it is a small field of riders, and we are two old ladies! How could you not remember us!

Lining up for the start. Because of us from last year, they now have an ‘eBike division’ and were going to have us wait for 25 minutes after the others started. What? We do not care about being timed or where we come in, but apparently there are AVID racers here that DO, and do not want eBikes interfering with their placing.

Susan made it clear to the staff that we could not wait 25 minutes as we had a cheering squad waiting for us to pass by them. Also, that we were slow and did not care about being timed. They were very nice and agreed to these conditions.

This ride is hard even on an eBike (for us) and we would definitely not be able to do it on a non pedal assist. We would miss so much if we could not ride the ride.

Views of the hills and valleys are simply beautiful.

In addition to the horses I posted from my ride yesterday – we got to see the goats —- many many goats. As with the horses, there were too many to get them all in a photo. I wondered if they are working goats like I had seen in California.

As one might guess, it is not easy to stop for photos while climbing high switchbacks which get tougher the higher you get. So we did not get the cows being herded away from their babies, nor a photo of Indian burial mounds that one of the local riders was telling us about.

Making it to the top was our priority and we did!

I look a bit tired here…

Normally I am the one taking photos of Susan, this time she got there before I did and took the photos.

After a short rest, rehydrating more, and grabbing a snack, I started down the hill first and Susan got a photo of me down below on the descent. You can almost see a red dot in the middle of the picture. That’s me. There are several riders that choose to have a someone drive them on the return down the hill.

Being a huge climb up, it was an easy coast down. In fact one has to be careful to not get out of control at high speed.

Been here, done that, got the tee shirt!

Final activity for this outing was dinner prepared by our fantastic leader, Deb. Amazingly she put together a marvelous dinner for 25 of us.

The finished product. Thank you Deb.

Except for out group picture taken after dinner, which I will have to add a a later time, this ends our event for this time.