Tour de France, Idaho

Early on July 5—the annual morning of fireworks-strewn roadways—a small group of us from Teton Valley, Idaho, pedaled the hilly, 32-mile Lamont Loop, aka “Tour de France, Idaho.” While they may have been actual communities at some point in time, both Lamont and France today hold nothing but dilapidated grain elevators standing beside the abandoned grade of a Union Pacific Railroad spur line running between Victor and Ashton, with connections from Ashton onward to West Yellowstone, Montana. (Several sections of the grade have been transformed into rail-trails, with more planned for the future.)

The riding out there is about as good as it gets: traffic-free, chip-sealed farm roads winding through a landscape of rolling potato and barley fields punctuated with the occasional deserted farmstead, as beautifully depicted in some of the photographs in the galleries of Ashton-based photographer Christopher Leavell (click on the "Eastern Idaho" gallery). Cold mountain water cascades down the beds of Conant Creek, Squirrel Creek, and the Falls River, while flowing more gently along the irrigation canals paralleling the natural waterways. Groves of quaking aspen trees, their leaves fluttering and whispering on the morning breeze, frame the distant Tetons, still holding a lot of last winter’s snow on the first weekend of July.

Serendipitously, about a mile of our Sunday ride took place on the Ashton-Flagg Road, which the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route follows to get from Idaho to Wyoming.

No crowds, no jokesters wearing devil outfits, and no roadside vineyards or latte-serving bistros—but this mellow, noncompetitive, open-country version of the big ride in France the country still comes highly recommended. (Go Lance!)

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BIKING WITHOUT BORDERS is posted each Monday by Michael McCoy, Adventure Cycling’s field editor, and highlights a little bit of this or a little bit of that—just about anything, as long as it’s related to traveling by bicycle.