The ride went well. We covered about 33 miles. The sun was out most of the way.

Only Ed Lee showed up. We started at the Higgens Point Boat Launch. There is a viaduct to a road that never got built. But you can get through on a mountain bike to the Yellowstone Trail. Someone from Bike CDA told me it turned into single track but they didn't tell me it got technical. There was a couple of embankments that I chose to walk down. I attacked one small uphill and didn't make it. Didn't try hard enough. Ed tried a downhill and wiped out but he was OK. After that point the roads were so good we could have had road bikes, even on the dirt road.

We went around Blue Creek Bay and the road turned into dirt about halfway until it started descending along a cliff above Wolf Lodge Bay. We crossed the freeway and got on Highway 97 and continued around Wolf Lodge Bay and Beauty Bay. There were lots of birders out looking ofr the eagles that were feeding on Kokanee Salmon. With their cameras with giant, long lenses on them and everything in camouflage coloring it looked like the field artillery. The tour boat was also cruising up the bay. There didn't seem to be any eagles but lots of seagulls.

We got up Beauty Bay Hill which was a steady 6% grade for two miles and found a little rest area. From there we went downhill a ways until we turned South on Burma Road. 

Guess what. The Burma Road had been paved since I had traveled it last. It used to be dirt. It was also steeper. The profile map showed a maximum grade of 8%. It didn't show the finer details. The road undulated quite a bit as we were climbing which was nice as it gave us a bit of a rest between the steeper parts. But when Ed said the grade was 10% I dropped it into the mountain climbing chainring.

We got over the top and had a long, winding descent and came out at a small inlet named Turner Bay. From their we went North on Highway 97 along the East side of Lake Couer d' Alene. I had never gone this direction on this road on a bicycle and only once in a car.

The road was flat for a ways until it started a gradual climb back up to Beauty Bay Hill. The 4 and one-half percent grade seemed easy by now. We took a little break at the Boy Scout Camp. There was a couple of areas there where they had their tent frames. they were wooden platforms with stick frames. They looked naked without tents over them.

When we got back to the freeway we took the shoulder Westbound and dove back under the viaduct to get back to the parking lot. And I found a set of sunglasses along the way.