Bike Odyssey 2014 Day 36 (June 21st) – the road through Paradise

I was going to call this update Zombie Apocalypse Refugee Camp, a term used online by a campsite customer to describe one of the campsites hereabouts (not this one we’re in). We’ve never yet encountered a ZARC, though we fully expect to, any day. But today the road ran through Paradise, literally and metaphorically – the tiny hamlet called Paradise and the most wonderful scenery I’ve ever come acoss, not excepting South Africa’s Eastern Cape. Route 200 from Sandpoint to Missoula follows the thrilling green waters of the Clark Fork river, streaming southwards from the depths of ocean-deep Pend Oreille Lake. I’ve never seen a river like it. Photos couldn’t possibly convey the shades of swirling forest green or the curious mantling – no other word except this ancient one will do – as if for a hundred miles and more whirlpools 6 to 10 feet wide were spiralling underwater, creating sliding surfaces, some shiny and some matt… with the effect of water about to freeze, or else a kind of fisherman’s dream of underwater shoals coated with midges. Perhaps these sliding surfaces are the effect of the immensely deep and cold Lake Pend Oreille water coming slowly to the warmth of day.

All around this, broad summery valleys hold snow-flecked peaks at bay, and finally the climax arrives: the immense panorama – the full width of the horizon – of the Kalispell glacier-ranges rises over the calm green flood plain like a backdrop of the Himalayas, snowy peaks from end to end.

After the ultimate luxury of our Sandpoint lodgings, back to reality with the Yogi Bear campsite (I kid you not), very pleasant; up with the tents. Cereal for supper. Yum. Freezing night. Ugh. Well, it is the shortest one of the year.