I awoke to a very cold morning and was glad to have my long underwear and wool socks on inside my sleeping bag.  I stayed in my sleeping bag and attempted to write in my journal some.  The sun took awhile to warm up the area since I was shaded in the thick green forest.  I had some left knee pain last night and it never bothered while riding at all.  It woke me up a couple times in the early morning but now it just has a slight ache, barely noticeable.  This is the same knee I had a problem with on the trampoline and the one I injured prior to my journey.  And of course I've been plagued by knee pains in the past from all the running I used to do and some left hip pain from that time in my life.  Biking is far less traumatic on the body.

As I was getting ready to leave I noticed my BOB wheel was flat again.  GEEZ what the crap!  I pulled the tube out and found a small piece of glass that punctured through the worn tire.  I think I need to get a new tire this one is starting to pick up everything from the road.  I broke out my patch kit and patched the tube and pumped it up effortlessly to 80 psi with my new pump.  WOW this thing works very good and quick.   It was now noon as I rode out of the park and continued north on 83.

Along the road I passed many dead deer off to the side with their bodies long out of life and decomposing.  That was the worst part of the ride, the scenery continued to be quite incredible as my pictures will show.  I only hope I'm able to capture things accurately through my photos.  After stopping at Summit Lake, I was a approached by a lady that had just pulled up in her car.  "You're going faster than me" she said.  Apparently she had passed me several times as she took time to stop for photography along the road.  Her name is D. and we talked at great length about photography which is her passion and what she teaches.  I was able to see all of her photography equipment in the back of her car.  A lot of blankets scattered over and around boxes.  A cooler contained slide film to maintain the cool temperature required.  A very large sturdy 7lb tripod, lenses, extension tubes and 2 cameras.  She just bought her first auto focus camera.  D. has always used fully manual cameras and had been skeptical of using automatic cameras.  But this new rebel G 2000 has depth of field preview which is something that is a must for photographers I guess.  We compared our cameras and she taught me a few things I didn't know about mine.  And after hmmmmmm..  I think an hour maybe longer, she had taught me about the use of extension tubes for macro photography, how to trade f-stops for aperture settings, and depth of field.  WOW I'm getting an education on the road! 

After she left I continued my ride north and thought.  Arriving at Swan Lake National Forest Recreation Area and campground at 7 pm, I rode in looking for a camp site.  There was a campout that charged me $10 to primitive camp here.  And there are no facilities at all!  Nothing, no showers just outhouses.  What a rip off, I paid ten dollars for a very nice campground with a very nice bathhouse back near Drummond, the "Good Time Camping" campground.  Oh well, I found an area near the stream of cold glacial water near an open field.  I leaned my bike along some old gray logs then made a cozy little spot for me to sit in the grass against one of the logs.  There I wrote in my journal and relaxed to the sound of the water and birds.

When the sun escaped the sky, it began to get cooler again, so I prepared for another cold night in my sleeping bag.  I left the rainfly off and looked straight up at the stars and slowly starting going into the stages of sleep with the hypnogogic stage hangin' on for a long time before finally drifting away.

Wind - Calm

Today - 59.47 miles
Total -  3791 miles
Avg. Speed - 12.5mph