Route 12...treacherous...no shoulder at all...my little plastic helmet seems hardly armor enough as the tandem tankers and the lumbering lumber-trucks roar past about six inches from my left shoulder.

Departed at dawn to beat most of the day-time traffic. Didn’t get off my bike for the first forty miles...to give you a sense of my general urgency to get the leg done quick.

Stopped in Lowell...another damned RV park--weigh stations of excess...met three retired people also cycling across the country; made me feel a sight less heroic.

I'll take the bulk of the climb on tomorrow...end in Powell...over the pass on Friday morning and then race down into Missoula.

Resting on the Clearwater River (Idaho)