The Sore-Butt Tour of Idaho: 1,921 miles in 5 days.

I set a goal at the beginning of the year to put 6,000 miles on my bike before I, uh, "put it away" for the winter (which really doesn't happen, I just get to ride it less frequently).  That would put my odometer at 60,000 miles.  Not sure I'll get it, but I'm sure going to try!

My kids were staying with Grandma and Grandpa for a couple of weeks, and my wife had a youth camp to go to.  Wait, I have a week to MYSELF!!?

See ya!

Day 1.

Left Blackfoot, Id about 10:00 in the morning. Was pretty overcast with a chance of rain, but hey, this is happening rain or not.

Can you tell my wife was being a goofball with the camera?



The first 35 miles were in road construction.





Stopped in Arco for a quick shot of the chunk of Submarine.





And while I was there I bought an EIGHT DOLLAR CAN of WD40!?!! My speedo started to squeak the first 10 miles of the trip. I pulled in to a car parts store (er... THE car parts store), pulled off the cable and lubed it up in hopes that it would cure the noise.

No dice.

Well, got a LONG ways to go still so I guess I can live with a bit of noise from the dash.

A few more miles brought me to Craters of the Moon park. Pretty cool lookin place, really need to go into the park someday and check it out. I'm now roughly 75 miles from home.



Pointless self portrait because I was getting bored with the desert...



So a quick story. I had been plonking on down the road for a while and was slowly catching up to what I thought was a cop. Sure enough, it was. I ended up following him for 20 miles or so, and then we both turned off on another road. The speed limit was slightly lower, and he was stuck behind a slow moving car. It was going either right at or 5 miles an hour below the speed limit. I followed 'em for another 15 miles or so, and finally on a long clear stretch with a passing zone, while he was tailgating the car and they were both going about 50, I passed.

Sure enough, he pulled me over... Gave me a warning, and then proceeded to talk bikes / routes for another 5 minutes on the side of the road.

Finally starting to get into the hills!



If you look real close you can see the shorts-and-t-shirt guy on the 950 blasting down the road.



These pics were taken near the top of Galena Summit, North of Ketchum, ID on Hwy 75.

Kept on towards Stanley, Id. GREAT roads to ride a bike on! It was forecast to rain off and on this day, and it did. Just not on me.



Most of the roads the entire trip run through valleys and follow creeks and rivers- a good sign of fun roads.



Okay, so maybe I *did* get rained on a little bit. At Stanley, I turned off on Hwy 21 to Lowman, then did the Lowman-Banks road over to Hwy 55. One of my favorite stretches of the entire trip, but it was kinda short. These pics were taken there.





The GRAND TOTAL of "rain" that actually got me sorta wet for the entire trip was probably under 10 minutes- 30 seconds here, another minute there. Wasn't ever in a big downpour either so I basically stayed totally dry- didn't even have to break out my rain gear!

Rivers were running strong! This was alongside Hwy 55 headed towards Cascade, ID.



Thats were I'm headed, right where the rain is coming down.



Made it to Cascade, and swung into the park to see if I could remember where Grandpa would take us camping / fishing when I was a kid. Think I found it, but kept going thinking the road would go back out to the highway.

Nope. Took me across the dam:



and through 20 miles of gravel road,



where I almost managed to change the "Hog Catcher" into the "Deer Slayer".



Finally made it back to the highway. Lake Cascade:



Campground! Stayed outside of Donnelly, Id, at the Rainbow Pt. campground.



Camp all set up for the first night.



Odometer at the end of the day.




So here are the totals for the day:

Odo start: 56,695
Odo end: 57,062
Total: 367 miles.

Money spent (WD40, Lunch, Gas, Campground): $50.94.

One day down, several more to go.

Wow, I'm way behind...

So here's an abreviated version of the last half of our vacation...

Since my wife soooooo awesome, she loaded up the kids and drove the car out to Washington. I hopped on my bike and road down through Glacier Park and over Going to the Sun Highway again, and of course it was AWESOME.













We all arrived at our destination safe and sound. My brother in law had some time off of work for the get together, so we spent most of our first day puttering in his garage on our bikes. I finally got the fan switch wired in and finished mounting my side covers.



Went to watch the fireworks out at Cusick- the Tribes put on a HUGE display. It was great. Had a lot of fun watching a dozen or so little kids running around with glow sticks too.



Part of the reunion every year is a Motorbike ride. We did about 250 miles up and around the NE corner of Washington- some real pretty roads and sights up there. Makes me almost miss living up there...









'Course, theres also the BICYCLE ride too... We road about 14 miles along the Centennial trail in Spokane, WA. I even got 'Ole Paint again this year!



Then it was time for the loooong trip home. We road/drove to Helena, met Grandma and Grandpa and off-loaded our kids for a couple of weeks. We stayed at a bed and breakfast there, and did a little shopping. Helena sure is an interesting town. Has some GREAT thrift shops! Even scored a basketball hoop and backboard to put up in my classroom this year.



Saw a whole bunch of this on the way home...



The Silver Bullet. Been a great car, but I sure hope we can upgrade sometime soon.



So there you have it. A week of Canada, then a week of Washington. Now we are empty nesters for a couple of weeks, what are we going to do!?!?

Vacation part 1- the Great White North!

So pretty much every year we get to go on vacation.  Having family in two different locations means we have to schedule two vacations into one trip since both destinations are *only* 350 miles apart...

This year we started off in Southern Alberta.  Thankfully my parents live far enough south that we didnt have to worry about all of the crazy flooding places like Calgary and High River got this year.  Had some excellent weather, a great family reunion, awesome food, and lots of playing!

What would vacation be though without a bit of "work"?  Suprisingly Dad is still working on getting rid of junk.  At his current rate he should be cone by August.  2079.  He wants to get rid of this old Fargo cab, so I pulled a bunch of parts off it as spares for great grandpas Dodge.



Course, what would a trip to Canada be without driving the Ugly Car?!!?



Parade was great,







Fireworks were awesome,





Even snuck in a ride up to Waterton Park.  Only saw one deer though, kinda strange for a trip to the townsite.







Fun was had by all. Many ketchup chips were consumed. Much to my wife chagrin... Had to be done though. After a week in Canada, it was time for a change if scenery.

The long way 'round: Big Southern Butte.

 Managed to sneak away for a few hours yesterday and what was supposed to be a little ride ended up being a little longer.

Sometimes I feel trapped here in South East Idaho- we have a plethora of long, straight, boring roads. If you ride for an hour in just about any direction, you start to get into some more exciting areas but I just never have the time to ride for an hour to get to the good riding spots.

That needs to change. Consider this my exploratory route to see which directions I need to head for the "good" roads.

Lets pound some pavement! Originally, I figured I would ride out to Craters of the Moon and back, past Big Southern Butte. It's about 50 miles as the crow flies from my house, a fair bit further if you get there on roads. The nearest paved road is still quite a ways away, this thing is HUGE.



But you can get fairly close. 'Bout as close as you can get from the highway.



Gotta love the Idaho desert.



Made it to Craters- will have to take the fam out here and hike around for a bit. This is on the back side of the butte from where I started.





Yup, still more boring Idaho desert.



I did finally make it out towards the mountains and found a few interesting roads I'll have to explore in the future.

1,000 down, and only 5,000 more miles to go to my goal for the year!



Pretty uneventful ride, but I did see this off in the distance coming out of Twin Falls.





Not sure what caught on fire, but they were just unhooking the trailer as I went by.

Looped around and hit I-15 for the South view of the butte...



Almost home, with the butte waaaayyyy off in the distance.



Not a bad trip- 302 miles in about 4.5 hours.



Next time, I'll cut off to the North and get up into the fun stuff I hope!