2011

A look at the new bridge going in and what it's done to our little walking spot.

“Special” Ed leads four of us through his old stomping grounds along the Owyhee River and Reservoir. I’m the only one without a KLR. We find evidence related to a homicide and visit Leslie Gulch before I part from the group for an eerie night visit to Jordan Craters.

After yesterday’s trail troubles, we take the easy but long road from Elsie on our way to Crystal Lake only to find the final trail too narrow and steep for riding. With day’s end approaching, we hustle to find an acceptable alternative, finally settling in for a beautiful sunset over Benewah Lake.

We see great country even as we face a day of dead-ends, one after another, trying to make our way to Wallace then Elsie Lake. Logging operations blocked three routes, sending us through the woods or miles around. It is nearly dark when we’re finally able to set up camp.

From Crater Peak we venture to areas unknown around Monument Buttes before taking lunch in Avery and heading north of the St. Joe River for the first time. We ride through the several Moon Pass tunnels before staking a claim up Loop Creek.

My brothers and I set out for our fourth annual motorcycle camping ride in the mountains of North Idaho. For the first day, we revisit our favorite subalpine ridge site behind Clarkia.

Greenhorn Ben joins me for an overnight ride along Hell’s Canyon on our way to North Idaho, me for a high school reunion and Ben to see family. We enjoy a beautiful view of the Seven Devils from our campsite on the lip of the canyon.

Her college orientation complete, Laura and I begin the ride back to Boise as far as light allows, past and future connected by penumbral roads.

I use a day I have to myself, while my mom is at work and Laura at college orientation, to tour around my boyhood school and home, my memories, in Troy, Idaho.

While Laura spends the day visiting with my mom and her friends, my brother Jesse leads us on a ride over Moscow Mountain to forest trails around Laird Park.

My oldest daughter Laura and I ride two-up three hundred miles north on winding highways and back roads to Moscow and Pullman where she will begin the next chapter of her life as a student at Washington State University.

I am just not feeling it yet. Oh sure, there’s the wind, the blue sky, the rumble of the boxer engine below, but heading down the road to the mountains with Hunter on board, I might as well be sitting in the office chair at work for how excited I am.

Our plan to go on a longer ride before Hunter travels to his dad’s for the summer has been repeatedly postponed by rain, graduation events and birthday parties. Such is life with the four kids. Today is our last chance. Hunter’s plane departs at 6:10.

I meet up with a new rider, Ben, for a ride south across hills arid and unknown to us around Big Jacks Creek and beyond toward Nevada. We explore a homestead and Zeno Falls before struggling to find the route home.

A rare ride with Kayla to Initial Point then Swan Falls Dam and across the desolate Birds of Prey area to Grand View and much needed dinner at the Black Sands Resort along the C.J. Strike Reservoir. We only fall over once.

They got midway and decided it was too deep so I carried them both. They liked that.

I join Phil, Ryan, Sam and Tyson for a little of Idaho’s Centennial Trail along the Bruneau and an overnight along hot springs. The road into the canyon conspires with morning snow to mean us harm.

Hunter and Brenna ran to claim the first good hitting, poking or zapping (magic) stick they could find.

Job security has been welcome in these times but it’s hard to know what’s ahead. Some expect, and even seem to hope for calamity, the dissolution of society. Such ideas seem masochistic, mentally defective. I did put a survivalist book on my Amazon wish list, though. I’ll read it in the woods if I need to.

The stick in her hand is a "magic wand" she found.