Tahoe and Montana again

We had a wonderful time in Tahoe. The weather was perfect (although a bit too cold to swim) and we did some nice hikes and bike rides. There are so many trails!  My favourite trail was definitely the Flume Trail--such amazing views!! It started at Incline Village and, after a bit of a climb, ran along the side of the mountain. The trail was fairly narrow (although not narrow enough to worry about falling off) so there was mountain on one side of you and a drop off on the other. Great views...not so great if you're afraid of heights.
I find climbs on my bike to be quite a struggle so I didn't weight myself down with my camera. However, our friend Dave generously shared his iPhone photos with me so you can get an idea of what it was like.

The biker in the first photo is Ute, Dave's wonderful partner from Germany. Dave and Luke met about 25 years ago at the mountain biking World Cup at Mount Snow in Vermont. We met up with Dave and Ute in Tahoe and it had been about 20 years since Luke and Dave had seen each other. They both said they look exactly the same as they did back then :)
The lake is quite low because of the mild winter California had this year. We tried to swim twice but each time the water never got higher than our knees--you would have to walk out quite a distance to get deeper!
After we left Tahoe we drove back up through Nevada to spend time in Idaho. Up until then it had been a mature, dignified trip however I managed to convince Luke to stop in Elko Nevada so we could see the biggest taxidermy polar bear "White King". He was over 10 feet tall and now can be seen in a 'historic' casino. Here's me with White King:

I missed out on the dino park in Ogden and seeing the bizarro 2 ton statue of a sphinx with Mormon church founder Joseph Smith's face....so I was happy to get in this bit of kitsch.

We ended up in Twin Falls Idaho for a night, then drove up to Sun Valley/Ketchem. We had a great campsite in the Sawtooth National Forest. We did a fun bike trail called Curlys and I got some more practice climbing (it feels like I'll never get better at it...but I'm trying). The best moments of that trail were two large owls that flew in front of us and 4 fox pups that are living under a porch at the bottom of the trail.
There is a bike tour you can do in that area that's 500 miles with over 50 hot springs on the route. That is unfinished business too.

We drove up to Butte Montana and on the way we spotted a number of bikers riding the Great Divide Race. Luke has followed this race for a few years and is seriously considering entering it next year. The race goes from Banff to the Mexico border. Luke took some great photos of the riders.

We're now in Helena Montana. It's crazy beautiful here too. Our next plan over the next couple of weeks is to drive up to Banff and Jasper, then make our way up to Whitehorse Yukon.