Day 40 Arco, ID to Twin Falls, ID

Tuesday 30 August 2011 Day 5 of the 6'th week. Day 40 on the road

We were up and out the door early to try and beat the afternoon winds.
The forecast for the Arco area ( Atomic City) was for 25-30 mph winds while Twin Falls was only 10mph.

If we could get 50 or 60 miles south before noon the heavy winds may be avoided.  Well the plan worked and we covered today’s 112 miles quickly.

We passed a place that is called Craters of the Moon National Monument. It is a huge expanse of cooled lava flows that looks like the surface of the moon.

When we arrived in twin falls we crossed the Snake River Canyon not far from where Evil Kanevil made his failed jump. The canyon is absolutely beautiful and deep.
 Once on the other side Joe spotted a guy folding what looked like a parachute. We walked up to him and found out he was a base jumper.  We had just missed his jump off the Snake River Bridge.
Here in Twin Falls it is legal to base jump off the bridge or any of the cliffs.  According to the jumper people come here from al over the word to make the leap into the canyon.

To all of us it looked truly insane to jump off that bridge.  Imagine driving up in a car not knowing you have entered the base jumping capitol and see a person leap off the bridge hand rail!

Tomorrow we will make a round trip run from Twin Falls to Nevada and back.  This will add the 1th state to the tour.  A suggestion was made that we could strip the bikes of our heavy wind catching saddlebags to make this 100 mile blast to Nevada. We have trained and rode for over 3 months with a heavy bike.  Pull off the bags and for a few days we will be Super Riders on light weight machines. We could blast off the run to Nevada in record time.  It would be great!!  BUT it would also be “cheating”.  The decision was made quickly.  We will ride to Nevada fully loaded.

112 Miles

2246 Feet of Climbing

Temperature 85-95 degrees