Day Five - Beautiful Idaho

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Today looked like a shorter day on the map and since my departure would start with a winding road I decided to wait until it was good and light out there before leaving. It is one thing to start out in the dark across the plains on a two-lane road but it is something I would not do on a twisting road through a forest – the large critters are still out and about.

The day started with a six mile wondrously curvy descent on impeccable pavement into the canyon cut by the south fork of the Clearwater River. The curves continued in the valley as the road hugged the west river bank as it entered the Nez Perce Indian Reservation from the south.

This was the top of the descent into the Clearwater valley. You can see the change in vegetation from the dry grass at the top to the wooded slopes that lead down into the valley.

This road did serve up a couple of surprises. On rounding one bend at a fair clip over the posted limit there were two fawns on the left side of the road munching on the dew-soaked grass. Startled, they scampered across the road and disappeared into the foliage on the right. I braked to a halt in the event there was an adult deer accompanying them with the same idea of crossing the road in somewhat of a startled hurry.

Shortly after that I saw the first of many signs warning of stock on the road. I have a strange sense of humor and the two predominant warning signs in this area are “Watch for Stock” and Watch for Rock” and I roll them around in my head creating puns – yep, they are groaners and I will most certainly spare you of them!

Anyway, a couple of miles up the road what do I find? None other than stock on the road!! Two horses clip clopping along!! I laughed out loud and said to no one in particular “what next, a bear?”

The short morning sprint ended in Kooskia where the Clearwater meets the Lochsa, a rather picturesque confluence that I stupidly did not capture on film. I had ridden 150 miles or so along the Lochsa the day before so it was like meeting an old friend and we would be together again for, oh, sixty miles or so.

This is a quiet part of the Lochsa River. It is so clear that in the foreground you can see the pebbles at the bottom. There is no industry and there are no farms upstream from here so you know the water is good and the fish are safe to eat.

What a beautiful sixty. As with the prior road, this one hugged the river with sheer cliffs on one side and a shimmering river on the other. The road was excellent and the traffic light so I could fully enjoy the road, leaning the bike way, way over as I accelerated through the corners.

West of Lewiston I left the Lochsa River to head north on route 3 up the Little Boulder Creek valley, over the top in Latah County and then on down the Saint Maries River which flows into Bell Bay.

The climb out of the Lochsa River valley wound up the hillside to high plains among hills and bordered by distant mountains. It was a really pleasant drive with the scenery changing with each turn, alternately forested and farmed.

Second surprise of the day was served up on one of the forested sections of road. I will just put it this way the moose is a very large animal and from the vantage point of a motorcycle at 70 MPH it is a huge freakin’ beast!! I have never seen a live moose, not even in a zoo and I do have to say that they sure have the strangest shaped head!!

There were three of them, one large adult and two babies, which, may I add, while clearly young and much smaller than the adult, were way larger than even the corn-fed Ohio deer!

I got the bike stopped in time as the adult moose completed its crossing. I am guessing it was female as it did not have horns (antlers?) and I don’t think young moose hang around bulls. Anyway, the first of the two young ‘ns somehow lost its footing in the middle of the road and all four feet went in different directions. It went down so fast its head bounced off the pavement. Watching that poor thing try to stand up was like watching a dog trying to get up in a hurry on linoleum flooring – not elegant and not successful in one try. As it was struggling to get up the second calf was prancing undecidedly on the road and then they ran off after the big one. As I started up I realized that one of the little ones did not jump the fence but kept running into it and bouncing off. After a couple of those it finally jumped and was off into the woods. With that I continued along my trip. All that took probably fifteen seconds, twenty at most.

Well, as you can imagine, my alert status while high after the deer and the horses was now on maximum. The highest forest fire warning level is EXTREME, written in white on a bright red background. That is where I now was.

I stopped in the little “town” of Fernwood for breakfast. It was a small blue building just up the road from a logging company. There was a little group of locals catching up on the gossip of the week – pretty mild stuff. Someone put in a new door, someone painted the shutters on the front of the house, somebody else got their truck running again – what a peaceful place!

I ordered my usual road breakfast of two eggs over easy, hash browns, sausage patties and wheat toast. The owner/waitress who looked to be a spry 65 or so asked if I wanted jelly with my toast and I said no. That answer produced a smile that looked to say “good for you, men have no business putting that junk on their toast”.

The breakfast was hearty – I think they are accustomed to serving lumber jacks up here! I chatted a while with one fellow sitting by himself as I waited for my food. He had lived there all his life and worked at the lumber company for seventeen years at some point in his work life. I asked him about the roads and he kept giving me routes that would be as straight as possible. I asked him about route 97 which I intended to take and he said it was one crooked son u’m bitch. He kept talking about a place that sounded like Cordeline and I did not realize until later that he was telling me about Coeur d’Alene, the town north of Bell Bay.

I liked the stripes left on this field after the combine harvester was done and the lone tree at the top.

Here is another shot of the field with distant mountains peeking over the top.

This was my breakfast stop. One side was the cafe and the other side was the bar. The cafe was non-smoking and the bar was the smoking side.

Fed and happy I got back on the bike under clear blue skies to continue my journey north. A few miles up the road at Saint Maries there was about half a mile of cars just sitting there! I had forgotten about parades!! Thankfully, my breakfast stop allowed me to have avoided sitting there for the half hour the parade ran. I was in traffic for about ten minutes, ten minutes in which I practically roasted sitting on a hot bike on hot pavement!

North of Saint Maries I got off route 3 and onto route 97 which runs along the eastern shore of Bell Bay for about 30 miles up to I-90. Bell Bay is a truly beautiful lake. Under the clear skies the lake was a deep crystalline blue which was just astoundingly beautiful, rimmed by forested slopes and sheer rock cliffs. At thirty miles + long with dozens of bays and bayou’s it easily accommodated hundreds of water craft without looking busy. There are so many sections, if you will, of the lake that if you did not like being around five speeding monsters you could head around the corner into another section with a couple of sail boats taking advantage of the stiff breeze. A really beautiful lake but there were no pull-offs at the best vantage points so I did not stop to take photos since I could picture two pick-up trucks pulling campers, headed in opposite directions meeting right where I parked and with narrow lanes and no shoulder, I would be a goner! I had already had enough close calls for the day.

I jumped on the freeway for a shot ten miles west to catch route 95 which would take me north where I would branch off on route 2 to Montana. The beauty continued. Hills, valleys, lakes, rivers, streams, forest, farm land, you name it, Idaho has it ...... in abundance. This is a truly beautiful state with such huge variation in land from north to south and east to west that you can say there is no one Idaho.

About forty miles up the road I passed through Sandpoint, a beautiful resort town on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille – another astoundingly beautiful body of water. There is a mile-long bridge that crosses a western branch of the lake and as you traverse it you can see boats of kinds, I saw a guy in a kayak with his dog in the front of the kayak, seemingly pointing the way, two young boys racing across a lagoon and a bunch of kids splashing around on a little beach as their parents grilled on the shore.

Just before my turn off onto route 2 I crossed over the Kootenai River in a valley surrounded by towering mountains. Again, no place to pull off so no photos. I had half a mind to go back into town and ask someone to ride on the back and take pictures because as you descend and then climb out of the valley the views are really beautiful.

A beautiful bend of the Kootenai River just inside the western border of Montana. You can see how heavily wooded the slopes are if they have not been ravaged by fire.

In this photo you can see the damage that a fire of several years ago has done. It did not consume the entire hill but it will take many years for the saplings to hide the ground again.

Route 2 followed the Kootenai up to Libby and then traversed the hills of northwestern Montana on into Kalispell, my home for the night.

The trip was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Hills, mountains, rivers, lakes, forest, you name it!! What made it even better is it is significantly less populated than Idaho and the lakes are so much less developed. No large houses, just the occasional camp ground or, sometimes, simply a boat access ramp.

The speed limit on two lanes in Montana is a loosely enforced 70 so I made quick work of the 150 miles to Kalispell. When I was about thirty miles out the sky ahead started to haze up and I remembered the smoke from forest fires in the southern part of the state. Sure enough, as I got closer I smelt the familiar smell of smoke and ash. There were three separate incident camps so I guessed the fire had to be a pretty good size.

Coming into Kalispell from the west is pretty cool; the town is in a valley and to the east there is the huge wall of the Swan Range of mountains. Today the view was somewhat obscured by smoke and I hope that smoke does not extend into Glacier Park where I intend to spend most of tomorrow.

I had no problem finding the hotel. As I pulled in there was a couple unloading a BMW GS with Canadian plates. They were from Calgary and were out and about riding through northern Idaho and Montana for the weekend. They had seen me earlier in the day as I rode along route 97 on Bell Bay in Idaho – they remembered the bright yellow jacket, white helmet and the bike. I did not remember them as there are lots of GS riders in this part of the country and many of them riding two-up.

Anyway, dinner of a tasty burrito washed down with a Corona at a Mexican restaurant a couple of hundred yards down the road capped a great day on the road through astoundingly beautiful country.