The day before yesterday we took a rest day in Stanley, and then yesterday we ended up taking a van ride down about 80 miles or so past Ketchum/Sun Valley and then over towards Pine on Highway 20.
The rest day in Stanley was nice. Stanley is a very small and very touristy town but it's OK. There is a bakeryt here which was amazing and a grocery store which was really terrible. The library was very pleasant; I got caught up on some school work for my psychology class on fight or flight or freeze. I started reading a research paper for my research class which I thought was about 8-10 pages but turns out to be 49 pages long. Why does research have to be so wordy? Kip and I went on this journey where we thought we were finding a new hot spring, only to go in a giant circle and end up...back at the hotel's hot springs. There's some kind of metaphor there. We went in that hot springs twice more. We met a guy and his family; he was a single dad working in construction who was raising three kids all on his own. The oldest kid was 16 and he said he wanted to go to trade school instead of college. It's interesting to be out here on the road meeting new people from different situations. It's never boring, and everyone has been really nice so far.
The van trip out here was nice; the driver was Kip's age and we had a long conversation. He worked in admissions for higher ed for Boise State and I asked him some questions about that and then Kip and him talked politics for a while.
We did end up riding yesterday; we got in 18 miles of some of the most beautiful riding I've ever done, down and along a reservoir and through some really desert terrain. It re-inspired me for today, which is starting with 2900 feet of vertical climbing (!). The terrain reminded me of the terrain out by Antioch.
