Salmon, Idaho

Tuesday 3 August 

Day 16, 5170 km

Most of the day following the Salmon River, tonights motel is right beside it, swift flowing, not too deep, still part of Nez Perce domain.

A bloke across the river is throwing a plastic bottle in for his labrador to retrieve, getting ashore 200m downstream.

He's been going an hour non-stop, the bloke is so obese, the dog should be throwing the bottle.

Stayed last night in Boise, the Idaho state capital.

Leaving Grangeville yesterday morning included a look at a mammoth skeleton reconstruction, several have been found in a bog just out of town.

White Bird

Then not long to the White Bird battle site, the first skirmish between militia and the Nez Perce.

The Indians won 34 - nil, after their white flag pow-wow party got shot at, so the US army got called in after this to start the legendary chase.

At a little town called New Meadows, the country opened out to wire fenced meadows

running significant mobs of cows and  calves.

We opted to do a loop west to the Snake River, to the Brownlee, Oxbow, and Hells Canyon dams.

Signpost at New Meadows

It was a long haul in, (we ended up doing just short of 630 km for the day), but worth it.

The road was a private electricity dept road, high in places, bluff each side, but sealed all the way, with a visitor centre and a coke machine at the end.

The canyon is reputed to be deeper than the Colorado, but I dunno...

the water in the dams has succumbed to algae, and with the enclosed canyon and 98F temp, the trip was a bit pongy.

Going to Hell's Canyon

The CB's handling the high air temps OK, keep up 70 kph or better, it can maintain an engine temp of lower 80c.

Getting late...

on the way out we stopped at a small-town diner, for a great American feed.

I had the 12oz sirloin, succulent, nearly an inch thick, salad from the bar, mashed spud with gravy, hot mixed veggies, and toast

$15......, and ate all up.

Then the twilight run into Boise...

interesting to be on the freeway, with the aroma of crops, jalapenos in particular, wafting into our helmets.

Different story this morning though, looking back on the industrial haze shrouded city.

My Whistler radar works here!

Picked up a cop giving a ticket on the way in, and this morning was puttering (fortunately) down the boulevard to the gas station when it went off, a motorcycle cop was hiding behind a tree with the hand-held gun.

Did a 20 km detour to Tractor and Machinery Parts to acquaint myself with a company who supplied parts for my crawler couple of months back.

Turned out to be 10 acres out in the desert almost, of dead CAT bulldozers, graders, diggers, log-haulers, you name it...

administration is from a shipping container office, supplying parts round the world via internet,

bit like a down-market Horopito for heavy machinery.

I got NZ$1400 worth of parts landed at my mailbox for US$314.

Sawtooth Range

Back down I-84 to ID-21 for a run over the Sawtooth Range, first stopping at a little dirt street town called Idaho City.

Pulled into a saloon for breakfast, where a woman was sweeping the dirt sidewalk, a klunky pickup parked outside.

There must be local-body elections coming up soon, we're seeing lots of hoardings along the way...

Joe Bloggs for Sherriff, Mary so and so for District Court Judge, someone else for Coroner, etc

One of our party commented "that's terrible" (as a way of politics), but I think its pretty good. Take the klunky old pickup, if the sherriff puts too many off the road, he might lose his job. He ensures the children and pedestrians get looked after.

Just imagine...,

if our rates are too high, or environmental regulations too restrictive, we sack the council CEO, not the councillors!

Stopped at a little roadside hot spring, gushing out of a hole at the bottom of the Salmon River canyon, too hot to keep your hand in.

That's the story!

US housing market on the move