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So why not push this road trip back?  Well, it is October in the Pacific Northwest.  November is Seattle's rainiest month, and December is a strong second place.  As this is a trip to get me around to some of my favorite northwest hiking areas, I was hoping for at least some dry weather.  If I pushed this trip back, I'd increase the likelihood that I'd be dealing with rain.  And sure enough, the weather turned the day after I got back.

It was mainly a loop trip.  Spokane, Butte, Pocatello, Boise, Walla Walla.  And even though I decided to trim off the last day of the trip, it went quite well, with a nice mix of hiking and sightseeing, visits to old favorites and some new discoveries.

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Photo Links

I have created some entries on Worldisround where you will find pictures from my trip:

Highlights

To Spokane

Tuesday October 9 -

Today was mostly just to get me positioned for tomorrow's plans.  I left for Spokane after work, getting there by mid-evening.  No sightseeing stops along the way.  Same hotel as last time.  A slow Tuesday night at Dempsey's Brass Rail.

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Idaho Panhandle

Wednesday October 10 -

I woke to a hint of sun in the east, incoming clouds to the west.  The forecast suggested that I'd have to deal with rain today, but I figured I could get a head start and hopefully get my planned hike in before the weather caught up to me.

I hit the road shortly after seven and made good time to Wallace, Idaho.  It was sunny when I left the interstate.  I picked up some pop and then found Idaho Highway 4.  This took me north through several tiny mining settlements.  The "4" ended, but the road continued on, gravel now and a lot rougher than I remembered it from two years ago.  

Two years ago, this wasn't the road I had intended to take, but 13 miles into it I had reached Cooper Pass and some trail heads, so I made the most of the wrong-road situation and took a nice hike along the Idaho-Montana state line to Pear Lake.

Today the clouds caught up to the sun after about ten miles.  And that's where I also started seeing a fair amount of snow on the ground - and soon along stretches of the rood.  The road at Cooper Pass was mostly covered with snow, but I decided to head out on my hike anyway.  With the threat of rain - or maybe more snow - I decided to limit myself to no more than an hour out before heading back to the car, unless rain or snow hit before then.  And of course if the trail were too messed up with snow, that'd be another reason for turning back.  After all, I was hiking alone in a remote area, and it looked like I'd have the trail to myself.

I ended up spending about 2 1/2 hours on the round trip hike.  Coming back was a bit slow because it was mostly uphill, and short sections of snow-covered trail slowed me down.  I did see a fine buck near the start of my hike, and some fairly fresh animal tracks were in the snow (a dog of some type, fox, probably), but that was it for wildlife.  

Back to Wallace, back on the interstate, and east to Butte.  I lost an hour with the time zone change when I crossed the Montana border.  A quick snack stop in Missoula (it had been my original planned stop when I was calling this my Oregon Trip), and then a bit longer stop at the Rock Creek Lodge near Clinton.  I should say the "world famous" Rock Creek Lodge.  It is famous for its annual Testicle Festival, basically a big weekend party centered on Rocky Mountain Oysters, cattle testicles that have been (typically) deep-fried and served with hot sauce.  

I discovered this place several years ago, and revisited it to get a T-shirt and bottle of Testicle Sauce (the hot sauce) for my brother.  This time my goal was to get some digital pictures of the place - and wouldn't you know it, but the sun poked out for a few minutes right on cue.  I picked up a bottle of the sauce and a coffee mug for someone's present this Christmas.

Except for a couple rest stop breaks, that was pretty much it.  I got to Butte after 6PM.  Heavy clouds prevented any kind of photo op, so I found a hotel, got checked in and then found dinner.  Snookums at the Snookum for nightlife, a place I had visited back during my 2003 Montana trip.  But it was Wednesday, so it was a quiet night, although a couple locals - including a recent transplant from Seattle - chatted with me for awhile.

To The Moon

Thursday October 11 -

Today went mostly according to plan, but there was a lot of driving.

The sun came up later than I expected, so it was dark out when I headed out of the hotel to get breakfast at McDonalds.  I had tentative plans to tour a few sites in Butte if I had the morning sun, but I really need a day here, and given how long the day's driving turned out to be, it's just as well that pretty much all I saw of Butte this morning was McDonalds.

I headed south on I-15 and then east on Montana 43 all the way west to US93.  The morning sun brought out the bright yellow leaves on the poplars and birch (I think; not enough quaking to be quaking aspens).  With fresh snow on the peaks of some nearby mountains, the scenery was quite pretty, so I made a handful of photo stops, something I'd continue doing all the way to Craters of the Moon, my afternoon stop.  Except for a short patch of very dark clouds over Wise River, I had sunny skies all day.

My first sightseeing stop was Big Hole National Battlefield, site of a battle between the U.S. Army and Montana militia on the one side and a band of non-treaty Nez Perce Indians trying to make their way to Canada to avoid being confined to the reservation system.  It was a surprise attack, and from a strictly military perspective, the Nez Perce won the battle.  However, their losses hit the band hard, and made it clear that they would be hunted down until they capitulated to the demand to move onto a reservation or until they made it to Canada.  The Nez Perce would get to within 40 miles of the Canadian border before they were worn down.

The monument preserves the battlefield site and a trail that leads through it.  It is a pretty setting, and on a sunny fall day it is hard to imagine the intensity of the battle that took place here back in August 1877, only 130 years ago.

My second major sightseeing stop of the day was Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve.  The Great Rift area of what is now Idaho was the site of a lava upwelling through several cracks in the earth's crust that took place here between 15,000 and 2,000 years ago.  The thick layer of lava, some cinder cones and lava tubes covered a large section of south central Idaho, making it all but useless to grazing, farming or development.  The monument includes a seven-mile loop road and short trails leading to several features of this volcanic landscape.  The recently established Preserve includes much of the surrounding landscape.

This was my fourth visit - my third where I actually toured the park.  I only spent a couple hours here this time, as my main goal was mostly to get some digital photos of what I've previously captured on film.  Alas, between a camera malfunction and the whitish skies when high thin clouds moved in, and I'm generally unimpressed with most of the photos I took.  But then, I have had problems in the past with trying to get photos of black lava, so I can't say that the photos are really any worse than my film-based photos.  I was just hoping that they'd be better.  Oh well.  I still haven't hiked the trails out to the lava trees, so I'll have to visit the park again some time.

I stopped in Arco for gas and then headed for Pocatello, where I would spend the night.  In particular, I was hoping to find the hotel next to Elmer's, a restaurant that served Swedish hotcakes for breakfast my previous two stays.  I did find the hotel.  And Elmer's.  I had a good dinner at Elmer's but I saw the breakfast menu - no more hotcakes.  Oh well.  McDonalds is just a block further down the street.

For nightlife I checked out Charley's, which apparently has replaced the Oasis.  The Thursday evening crowd was bigger than what I'd seen the last two nights, but it was still pretty quiet.  It was karaoke night, but only a few people sang anything in the hour I was there.  And all of them - including the karaoke host - were really off key.

Southern Idaho

Friday October 12 -

According to the map, it is about 240 miles from Pocatello to Boise.  Which doesn't explain why it took me more than 10 hours to make the trip.  I sightsaw (is that a word?) my way west across southern Idaho, revisiting some sites and finding some new ones in what amounted to a leisurely day of travel with no exceptional discoveries.

I pretty much followed the Snake River west, sometimes on the interstate, sometimes not.  My first stop was a rest area that offered some nice morning views of the Snake River near Massacre Rock, a river crossing site where pioneers and the natives often clashed.  Nearby was Register Rock Historic Site, a rock where several pioneers carved their names, initials and/or dates.  One of the more interesting carvings was done by a seven year old boy - an Indian head and a preacher head.  He signed and dated his work.  He would return to the site more than 40 years later and re-date his work.

I left the interstate to track down the Minidoka Internment National Monument near Jerome, one of a number of relocation camps set up during World War II where Americans of Japanese descent (1/16th or more, i.e., at least one great great grandparent) were confined during the war.  Racial prejudice fed fears that these Americans might aid Japan in the war, so West Coast Japanese Americans, including Seattle area people, were rounded up with as little as one day's notice, they were allowed to take only what they could carry, and they were shipped off to internment camps.  It is important to note that more than two thirds of these Japanese Americans were American citizens by birth, and Americans of German descent were not treated in similar ways.  Roughly a thousand of the internees volunteered for the military.  The resulting 442nd combat unit fought in France and Italy and was the most decorated unit of its size in U.S. history.

The site where the camp had existed was converted to farmland and auctioned off after the war.  Today fragments of the site are now part of the national monument, and most evidence of the camp is long gone.  However, the rock portions of the entrance guardhouse and visitors waiting room at the entrance station remain.  There is a small parking area where the entrance station was, but the site is still under development, so there is no signage.  There is a small display about the site at the Hagerman Fossil Beds Visitor Center, which I visited this afternoon. 

From there it was south to Twin Falls.  I stopped for some Snake River Gorge photos where the bridge crossed the river.  Then I headed for Balanced Rock, a weathered basalt column where a 48 feet high, 40 feet wide chunk of rock is balanced on a section that is only 1 1/2 by 3 feet wide.

I headed north towards Hagerman, stopping for views of Thousand Springs.  The area to the north and east is covered with a thick layer of basalt, a porous volcanic rock that has captured massive amounts of fresh water.  Water gushes from the canyon walls south of Hagerman.  I've seen something similar in Iceland, where large sections of that country are also covered with basalt.

Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument preserves a section of land where prehistoric flooding trapped a number of animals, including a large number of zebra-like horses, that were eventually turned into fossils.  Most of the land in the monument is generally inaccessible to casual visitors.  There are a couple turnouts along the park road, but these actually focus on the Oregon Trail, which passes through the south end of the park.  Some of the sections of the trail here are among the best preserved.  A hiking trail follows a three-mile segment of Oregon Trail wagon tracks.

The visitor center is in Hagerman itself.  There isn't much to it - its limited fossil displays mostly seem to target kids, but it does provide a chance to see at least a few of the fossils that the park is famous for.

I took a few more pictures as I left Hagerman, and then drove an off the beaten path route to Boise.  At Hammett I left the interstate to follow the Snake River on the Owyhee County side over to Murphy, and then north to Nampa and back east to Boise.  It is a pretty drive in a desolate part of the state.  And the last time I took the drive, I got a kick out of a lone parking meeting in front of the Owyhee County law enforcement building.  That was years ago, but the meter was still there.

Hotel, dinner and nightlife - the Emerald City Club.

Hell's Canyon And Home

Saturday October 13 -

I hadn't planned on heading home until tomorrow.  But as well as this trip was going, Saturday night would only be positioning me for a visit on Sunday to Mt. Rainier.  Although I haven't been to Mt. Rainier since 2005, I have had so little time at home in the last couple months that I figured I'd do little more than a drive through the park in order to get more time at home.  I finally figured that it wasn't enough of a reason just so I could say I'd been there on this trip.  I'll take a day trip down there this fall some time if I get a good weather day for it.

Of course, that also meant that I'd have to finish up today's sightseeing plans at a point where it was still reasonable to head home before day's end.  I took a route from Boise to Walla Walla through Hell's Canyon National Recreation Area that unexpectedly filled the day.  It was nearly 5PM when I finished up at my last stop, but even so it was only four hours from Walla Walla to Seattle, so I was back at my apartment at around 9PM.

The route I took from Boise to the Snake River at Hell's Canyon was the same as the route I took back in 1994.  A sunny day with pretty fall mountain scenery.  There are some dams along the Snake River creating a few narrow lakes along the Idaho-Oregon border.  I made some photo stops and then crossed over into Oregon.

It was dusk by the time I did this back in 1994, so on that trip I headed for a hotel city along the interstate.  This time I turned off the main highway and took a back road into the Hell's Canyon National Recreation Area across the northeast corner of Oregon to the town of Joseph.  It was a winding mountain road, quite pretty - and fortunately very low traffic.  I took one side road so I could check out the outstanding views from the Hell's Canyon Scenic Overlook, but for the most part I just enjoyed the pretty drive.

At Joseph is an Indian cemetery where Old Joseph is buried.  Old Joseph led a band of "non-treaty" Nez Perce who refused to recognize a smaller reservation imposed on the Nez Perce when gold was discovered on their original reservation.  Old Joseph died in 1871.  His son, Chief Joseph, would eventually lead a band of Nez Perce from here across the Snake River into Idaho and then through Lolo Pass and south into Montana where they would be attacked at Big Hole before making their way towards Canada.  It was this homeland that Chief Joseph unsuccessfully tried to procure for his people; he is buried on the Colville Reservation in east central Washington.

I continued northwest until I reached Walla Walla, WA.  Just west of town in the Whitman Mission National Historic Site.  A Christian mission was started here in 1836, and the site became an important stop for emigrants along the Oregon Trail in the 1840s.  Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa, one of the first two white women to cross the continent overland, established their mission among the Cayuse at Waiilatpu.  Results were mixed due to the nomadic lifestyle of the Cayuse.  But just as efforts were undertaken to close the missions, emigration along the Oregon Trail began.  

In 1847, emigrants brought with them a measles epidemic.  The Cayuse had no natural immunity to the measles - within a short time half the tribe had died.  When Whitman's medical treatment appeared to help white children but not the Cayuse, many Cayuse believed that they were being poisoned.  On November 29, 1847, a group of Cayuse attacked and killed Whitman, his wife and several others.  A few survivors escaped, but 50 people - mostly women and children - were taken captive and eventually ransomed off.  News of the attack and a petition by Oregon settlers prompted Congress to create Oregon Territory, the first American territorial government west of the Rockies.  

Today the park is mostly a history lesson.  One can walk the grounds and tour the museum, but original buildings are long gone.

This was my last stop.  From there I took Highway 12 west to the interstate and followed that back to Seattle, stopping in North Bend for dinner.  In spite of ending it a day early, it was a great road trip - nice weather and a good mix of activities and sightseeing.  And I picked up a few ideas for future weekend getaways.

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Souvenirs

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