In July 2009 my good buddy Andy, with whom I rode the Great Divide, and I headed down to Idaho for a 4 day loop. I had been to Idaho with Lesley (my wife) on a car trip in 2007 and had wanted to come back and ride ever since. Idaho has a great mix of scenery, from mountain to prairie to desert and even old lava beds, and they don't make too many straight roads there, paved or otherwise.
Day 1 - Evening in Lewiston
Daily km: 68.4
Total km: 68.4
We got down to the twin cities of Lewiston, Idaho, and Clarkston, Washington on July 1 around suppertime. Actually we were staying in Asotin, WA, a small town just south of Clarkston. We unloaded at the hotel in Asotin, and got on the bikes to find some supper, but first we decided we had to ride the Old Spiral Highway on the north end of Lewiston and take in the views at the top.
When we got back down to Clarkston, Andy found a little BBQ place where we met some interesting characters.
The menu had this entry at one point: "Healthy Green Salad with Lo-Calorie Dressing: $4369.27. Please allow 45 minutes to prepare. This is a barbeque joint."
After supper we headed back to Asotin and rode the very curvy Highway 129 to the top of the hill south of town. Then it was back to the hotel to rest up for the long day ahead of us.
Day 2 - Lewiston to Oxbow
Daily km: 401
Total km: 469
The day started off bright and sunny. After breakfast we loaded up at the hotel...
...and hit the road. We were only a few minutes out of town when we started getting some great views.
The roads were gravel and twisty...
...but after we hit the Oregon border they got a bit more trail-like.
Soon we got our first views of Hell's Canyon...
...and then after a few wrong turns and a bit of exploring we found this awesome Cypress-like road heading to Imnaha.
Imnaha Oregon is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere - just our kind of place. It didn't have any gas available, but did have a small general store with a restaurant.
We had some lunch and got some route advice from a few locals.
After lunch we headed further south. The road looked like this...
...and this...
...and eventually we got to the top of the Hess Road, which lead down into Hell's Canyon. The total elevation drop on this road was about 1100 metres (3600 ft) in 11.5 km! It was so twisty and steep it was actually pretty slow going.
With the drop in elevation came a rise in temperature, and by the time we hit the bottom it was 38 Celcius. We took a nice gravel road...
... to the pavement at Oxbow and then headed south a few more km to our cabin.
Andy had lined up places for us to stay before we left, and I have to say that he got good spots everywhere. This cabin would have slept 6 and had a kitchen, but it was cheap enough that the two of us could afford it. Not too fancy, but a great stop. I'd love to go back with the XR in the truck and just do day rides from these cabins sometime.
While we'd put on over 300 km at this point, the day wasn't over yet and we decided to ride the 23 mile twisty paved road to the Hell's Canyon Dam and Interpretive Centre. This road is an absolute must for any motorcyclist. It's a dead end road at the Interpretive Centre, so if you ride it late in the day there is no traffic heading out, so you can ride the twisties fast.
Hell's Canyon Dam is the lowest of 3 dams in a row on the Snake River (the others are Oxbow and Brownlee Dams).
There are impressive cliffs in the area too.
On the way back we did a quick run up and down the Kleinschmidt Grade to check out the first bit of the next day's ride.
Day 3 - Oxbow to Kamiah
Daily km: 398
Total km: 867
On July 3 we got up early and, after a quick breakfast at the local joint we headed up the Kleinschmidt Grade.
Once out of the canyon the roads looked like this...
...and we were treated to some nice views on the way.
We took a little side trip to explore a trail we found...
...but after getting back on the main trail we found it became overgrown and impassible within sight of Highway 95, which was our destination for this leg of the trip.
So we wound up backtracking a few miles and finding another road out to the highway a bit further south.
We needed to make up some time after our exploring adventures, so we blasted up the highway to Riggins for lunch, and then headed on a side trip up to Seven Devils viewpoint. The views of the Seven devils peaks and Hell's Canyon from this point were spectacular, and we were up over 8400 feet!
From there we headed back to Riggins, and then north on highway 95 to the old highway 95. After a bit of exploring and a few more nice views...
...we got to Grangeville, where we took a break and got a drink of water. From there it was some rural backroads northeast to Kooskia and on to Kamiah, where we had a room booked.
We had found out from locals in Riggins and Grangeville that Kamiah is actually pronounced "Kam-ee-eye", which doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you look at the word, but at least we didn't sound like tourists when we talked about the town after that. There was a very nice little main street...
...where we found a "local establishment" for supper and a Moose Drool beer.
Day 4 - Kamiah to Wallace
Daily km: 560
Total km: 1427
The morning of July 4 was crisp and cool in Kamiah, and we started off after breakfast with a nice bit of twisty pavement, turning into gravel heading east out of town. Several miles into the ride Andy found a fire lookout just off the road, so we rode up to take a look.
As if the view wasn't good enough from here, there was actually a huge tower constructed at the top.
From there it was on to the start of the Lolo Motorway, which Andy had been wanting to ride for a while now.
I am not sure why they call it a "motorway" because it was an awesome little jeep/dual-sport trail. We rode it for several miles having a blast, but just after passing a route that went back down to the highway we started running into some obstacles on the trail.
It was 30 Degrees C and we were having to ride through huge drifts! And every so often we'd have to detour through the bush around some tree that had fallen across the road. Finally we got to a spot where we couldn't get by (tree across and a cliff on either side) and decided to turn back to the highway.
We took highway 12 to Powell Junction and got some fuel and lunch, and then decided to try to head in to the Lolo Motorway from the other direction. We would need to get in there to get to the road that lead north to Wallace. A few miles in things were looking good, as the trees had been cleared from across the road, but a few minutes later we ran into these guys.
They were clearing the trees as they went through in their truck, but past them the road was impassible. It was obvious that we weren't going to make it to Wallace that way, so we figured we'd explore the area in the other direction a little and then slab it to Wallace. We found a trail that looked like this...
...and spent some time working around and through some obstacles...
...(yes, I actually cut through the tree with my Leatherman and we continued on!). The final photo above was a tough one. There was forest and a cliff on the left, and a steep little ledge on the right with a tight little trail. We tried the right side, and made it through.
However, we decided we'd better get out of there then and head to Wallace. We got back to Highway 12 and did about 290 km of slab through Missoula and up I-90 to Wallace, where we had a place at the Stardust Motor Inn.
Day 5 - Wallace to Lewiston
Daily km: 357
Total km: 1784
We started off the day with a breakfast at the Red Light Garage.
The folks here were very personable, and were fun to visit with. They also had this clock on the wall that I would like to have at my place.
After breakfast we toured around Wallace for a few minutes. Wallace is a really neat town. It looks like something out of the early 20th century.
It is very clean and neat, and has these classic looking buildings that are nicely maintained. It also claims to be "ATV friendly", which I think means they permit dirt bikes and quads on their streets. There is lots of good riding in the area, and we found some of it right away.
We headed south of town on the Slate Creek road...
...which had some great views...
...and a couple of neat little creek crossings...
...and was a first-rate dual-sport road in every way. I want to ride it again - preferrably every day on the way to work!
We turned west on the St. Joe River Road, and headed southwest on the Marble Creek Road. Eventually we were spit out on a wider gravel road...
...and got to the little town of Clarkia.
After a gas and snack break we headed out again. It started to rain on us a little, but it never got too bad so we soldiered on.
We found this creek crossing on the Big Sand Creek road that we thought might take us somewhere...
...but it didn`t so we crossed back and headed to Highway 3 at Bovill.
We did some more exploring south of Princeton, but ran into a few dead ends and no trespassing signs.
It was getting late and we had to drive from Lewiston to Cranbrook that night yet, so we got back to the highway and made tracks to Lewiston, stopping just north of the Old Spiral Highway for a quick pic on a road that looked like a Saskatchewan grid.
We stopped at the top of the Old Spiral Highway to take in the view that I can`t get enough of...
...and headed back to the Asotin hotel where my truck was waiting for us.
This was a fabulous ride, and I highly recommend it. I`ve posted the tracks to the GPS section in case anyone is interested in trying it sometime.
Oh, and here's a couple of vids from the trip...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edVW-fNFh_o[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s_zgR3XrkI[/youtube]
