Blogs from Idaho, United States, North America - page 8

We woke up this morning with more snow on the ground than last night. It was quite pretty, but we were all wondering what our drive out of West Yellowstone, Mt. was going to be like. At around 8:00 the five RV's were all lined up and ready to go. Dorrie and Quentin, Sue and Allan, and Tom and Peggy were heading to Great Falls, Mt., and Ray and I along with John and Diane heading towards Missoula, Mt.. Although the roads were snow covered, they were already melting when we left at 8:00 AM. We took Rt. 287 and I must say the scenery along the way was quite beautiful. There were majestic snow covered mountains surrounding many lakes. We drove around Lake Hebgen, about 40 miles north of Yellowstone, and Ray would have like ... read more

We decided a few weeks ago to take a short road trip to Glacier National Park, after school started and before snow closed the roads. We decided to book our hotel in Whitefish at the lower "no cancellations" rate...and now we are headed for rain...and some snow! Today Bill drove us from home to Sandpoint, Idaho. We took the North Cascades Highway most of the way here. We started out in dry, but cloudy weather, had heavy rain until we passed "Rainy Pass" and then alternated between rain showers and sun for the rest of the day. The countryside was very beautiful for almost all of today's drive! I always travel with the Roadside History and Roadside Geology books in my lap. And then I ask Bill to take endless side trips, and our compromise is ... read more

Day 33: Out of 3 Forks early, we did 90kms on the freeway to Butte which is the late Evil Knievel’s home town. It was a beautiful day but cool. Actually out of the sun it was cold. We stopped in Butte gassed up, had a coffee & worked out a route plan. It turned out in our ignorance to be a great route. Whilst at this stop Keith got talking to a driver with a huge truck transporting motorcycles. The company has a fleet of 50 trucks & transports sport bikes, Harleys & Dual purpose adventure bikes there & back so their well-heeled owners can fly out to the country, do a weekend’s riding & fly home Sunday night. Leaving Butte we were on a good but slippery gravel road for quite a few kms. ... read more

What can we say about Idaho? The people are friendly, the potatoes are famous, and the roads are long and very, very straight. A crazy cyclist we met heading west had told us about a fair in a town on our route, so on our first afternoon in Idaho we stopped in at the Washington County Fair. Cuteness overload as little fellas in chaps and spurs practised their lassoing on a wooden, pull-along cow. There were prize pigs and fancy corn and award-winning apple pies. We were tempted to indulge in the smoked Bbq for lunch, but we had met Ed in Oregon who had recommended us to his sister's restaurant in a town called Council, so we pushed on. Unfortunately we discovered that Ed was probably more enthusiastic about his sister's restaurant than she was. ... read more

On the road by 7.30 after an early start & breakfast in the local cafe. Within 10 minutes we were onto a gravel road & heading South. Our GPS route sent us through some low scrub on a rocky sandy track. After a bit more gravel road we were back onto a 1 lane track which had some deep ruts carved out by water in the wet season. This track went through part of the Craters of the moon national park which is all volcanic with a couple of obvious solidified larva flows. The track was interspersed with rocks & soft sand & one soft corner grabbed my front wheel unceremoniously dumping me on the ground. Fortunately I avoided the rocks so not a major except one leg was stuck under the bike & I couldn't ... read more