Fourteen BCI members and two guests participated in Bicycle Idaho in July, along with 300+ other cyclists. The tour was pretty much as billed with scenic roadways that visited historic towns, followed the dramatic Snake River , rolled into Grand Teton National Park , and went into Jackson Hole, Wyoming the hard way. We cycled a clockwise loop out of Pocatello, Idaho and visited the states of Wyoming and Utah over seven days and a total of 522 miles of cycling, a hair less than 75 miles per day. The miles were mostly easy, on backcountry roads where possible. You know you're good when the route follows the dotted lines of a triple-A map.

The route was described as having only two difficult days and BCI found it pretty much accurate. Day two saw us climbing over Teton Pass at 8,431' (a few feet less than Onyx Summit on Rider Around the Bear) after cycling 59 miles to get to the base of the climb. I've never seen my cyclometer tick over that slowly as I rode up the final three-mile, 10% grade to the top of the pass. The transmissions of cars driving past me were screaming. Or maybe that noise was from my legs? An awesome view of Jackson Hole greeted us at the top, followed by a scary descent of six miles on a 10% downhill. Many cyclists were sag wagon bound that day and I don't know if it was the climb or the descent that scared them. I know the descent scared me to death. Even riding the brakes hard I topped off at 48.3 mph. The incline was so daunting that the larger support vehicles took a longer, less steep approach to Jackson Hole .

The layover day in Jackson Hole was magnificent. BCI organized a “club ride” (do we get BCI mileage credit for that day?) and cycled 53 miles into Grand Teton National Park and Jenny Lake . Film and digital files were being exposed left and right. I ended up with 156 35mm photos and 422 digital shots from the tour. We lunched at one of the visitor's centers and celebrated our BCI ride with a stop at Dairy Queen on our way back.

The only other difficult day was day six out of Bear Lake . The color of Bear Lake is a magnificent shade of blue that reminds one of Hawaii or the Caribbean . We got to see a lot more of Bear Lake than we bargained for when we began the day with a one-mile warm-up followed by a seven-mile climb to the top of Logan Canyon and the start of a nearly 30-mile downhill! It appeared to me that BCI had no problem with the 1,800' climb, but it probably would have been nice to have a few more flat miles to allow our legs to wake up.

The glide down Logan Canyon was terrific with a headwind and fresh chip seal to slow us down enough to soak up the beauty of our surroundings as we rode towards our next goal, Aggie ice cream at Utah State . MMMMMM! That was some of the best ice cream I've ever had. It's made fresh daily, using their own cows and no preservatives. We gained weight that day.