Today was a beautiful day of riding. Sunny, not too hot or cold and not much wind. I crossed growing suburbs west of Boise before getting to rural roads that zig zagged me back to the Snake River. At end of the ride, I crossed the Snake and within the first mile of Oregon found a place to stay.

Sunrise is now 7:40am as I am getting close to western part of Mountain time zone and days are getting shorter in end of September. It was still 47F so not too cold.

I started on some larger roads with good shoulders and then turned into smaller roads. These were surprisingly busy and didn’t have a shoulder. I got the impression towns like Eagle had rapidly grown with housing development and put in roads on the cheap. Not only were they narrow but they also hadn’t done a good job of smoothing them. In the first few miles of these roads, I paused several times to let traffic pass. Eventually it became less traffic so there were gaps where cars could pass.

Bike trail along one of the busy roads.

On the edge of development. You can see a sign advertising new homes to be built. The road is narrow and despite looking new, wasn’t smoothed very well (or they ran heavy trucks on it when it was soft).

After the housing edge, climbed a few short but steep hills. Do you need badger or gopher control?

Somewhat nicer areas with larger lots and homes.

After some farms, I came to Old highway 30 which was parallel to I-84. Here was a store/cafe for lunch.

Much quieter country roads.

New Plymouth

Harvest festivals coming up…

Tractor…

Small stand with tomatoes.

Across the river to Oregon.

I found a motel within a mile of the border. Overall a nice day with good weather and interesting variety of riding areas.

My plan is to take a rest day here tomorrow. Over the next days, the plan is to cross over to the Columbia River and then follow it downriver to Portland. The next two days are forecast with stronger winds from the Northwest along my route. The day into Baker City will have ~2000ft of climbing and doing that on Sunday with a 20-30mph headwind doesn’t look pleasant. So my plan is to delay that by one day and here in Ontario is a nicer place to take a rest day than my intermediate location.