the Hiawatha Bike Trail

Here are the rest of the photos for today:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kyotesue/HiawathaBikeTrail

The reason for this trip is a gathering of the clan, with relatives coming from several places to gather with Mo’s brother here in his town. Several of us are camped here at Riverside State Park, sites 1,2, and 3, right along the river. Others are staying at her brother’s home, some in a motel, but we are planning several get together’s. One of these was to ride the famous Hiawatha Trail. The Hiawatha is a great example of what can be done with a rail to trail plan to use abandoned rail road right of ways for bike trails. The Hiawatha is especially interesting because it has such a great history for this area, and is in such magnificent country as well. Here’s a link that tells a bit about the trail.
http://www.skilookout.com/hiawatha/

You can take the fun relaxing easy ride, starting at the top of Lookout Pass, ride downhill for 15 miles on a 1.7 percent grade, and get shuttled back to the top by the trusty shuttle bus when you are finished. However, for us, the timing was a bit off, so we decided to ride up the 15 miles first, leaving from the Pearson trailhead on the North Fork of the St Joe River, meet the rest of the family at the top, then bike down together and drive home while the rest of them did the shuttle.

Mo and I left early, drove 2 hours via I-90 to Wallace, then up the Moon Pass Road and arrived at the trailhead around 10 or so. The ride itself is wonderful, and I had forgotten how beautiful the Idaho Panhandle forests are, with such lush vegetation and thick stands of Douglas-fir, grand fir, and western larch, western redcedar and all sorts of wonderful understory plants that tell the story of the moist volcanic ash soils that support these kinds of forests.

We took it slow, enjoying the views of the mountains, the rides through the tunnels, and the high wooden trestles. The story of the Hiawatha Line itself if fascinating and worth a look. There are several tunnels along the route, the longest one at the top with a length of 1.8 miles. It’s a bit disconcerting riding through them because they have ditches on either side with running water and of course, there isn’t any light. Bike lights or head lamps are needed to see at all, and ours weren’t that bright, but we did fine. The ride up seems long, and the tunnel is fun and just scary enough to be a bit exciting. We waited for the family, who didn’t show up, and decided to start back down around 3pm. The ride down is blissful, a perfect descent with nothing steep enough to require hard braking and gorgeous views. We had the trail almost to ourselves. Between the 2 of us, I am the klutz, but Mo was fiddling with her headlamp while we were in one of the dark tunnels on and smashed head first into the craggy hard rock wall of the tunnel. It was an incredibly scary moment, when I heard her slight oomph, a quick epithet, and then a whack followed by the crunching sound of bikes and bones crashing. The whack was her helmet hitting the wall, hard. We are both incredibly grateful it wasn’t her head, but her body and shoulder took the rest of the impact and she is all banged up with that inner pain that indicates broken or cracked ribs.
Nothing much to do about that in the long run so after some debating she decided that the hospital would be a waste of time to get xrays and a prescription for something and admonitions to rest and not over exert. Don’t need an expensive and long emergency room visit to figure that one out! Mo was in a bit of shock I think, with pale face and green lips but she made it out the rest of the way, more than 9 miles on her bike. Good thing it was downhill! We encountered a couple of really nice women on the trail, and one was an RN so she checked Mo for a concussion, and they helped us out a bit. Nice. Once down, I drove the 3 hours back to Spokane and we settled in to camp, skipping the family get together up at Don’s. Mo slept on the sofa propped up with pillows and helped out by an emergency supply of pain pills supplied by her brothers. It wasn’t a fun ending to what started out as a really great day, but we both felt incredibly blessed and lucky that nothing was any worse than it was.

Traveling to Spokane

Picasa photo link for today:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kyotesue/TravelingToSpokane


Wednesday morning
Finally, finally, a MoHo trip. Reading about all those folks who are full-timing out there is so much fun, but for us for the time being, we have to take what we can when we can. I left Jamestown at 3am in order to get to Mo’s early enough in the day for us to have a nice evening on the Columbia River on our way to Spokane. Our route from Klamath took us north on HWY 97, through Bend and Redmond to Madras and on north to the Biggs Junction on Interstate 84. Even though we were in Madras just a little more than a year ago, it was incredible seeing the growth and development that is occurring along that corridor. Redmond is now boasting big houses and brand new huge shopping centers that may eventually rival all the growth in Bend. The traffic was bad as well, with everyone in a hurry and aggressive. I kept wondering if really was a Tuesday afternoon and not a busy weekend. I also wonder what kind of recession we are really in, because even at more than 4 bucks a gallon there are a lot of big rigs, big trucks, rv’s, boats and toys being hauled around on the highways. Someone still has the money to play, as we do I guess. I know some people are really feeling all this, and I wonder how long it will take to hit the rest of us out here traveling the highways. So far we have managed to keep on doing whatever it is that we would be doing if gas were cheaper. We still drive 60mph to try to keep our mileage better, still buy discount gas at safeway and Costco whenever we can, but we still go where we want to go.

We are back on I-84 following Dan to Spokane after a really nice stop at theriver for a relaxing overnight. We originally planned to stay at the Maryhill State Park on the Washington side of the river at Biggs Junction, but the price was a bit steep at 38. We found the much less expensive LePage Park at the John Day Lock and Dam. Our national pass saved us half the hook up price which is a deal at $17. anyway, with electric 30 amp and water. The park itself is small and pleasant, with decent 2 bar telephone service. I let our air card go since I really didn’t want to keep paying 60 a month for that service when we aren’t traveling full time. I hope I don’t miss it too much. I suppose I can hang out at rest areas if I really need to get on the internet now and then. It all balances out eventually.

We are caravanning to Spokane from the park with Mo’s brother Dan. Being a bit independent, this is the first time that we have done this with someone and it’s a bit different, but should be fun. Dan and Chere, Mo’s brother and sister in law are in a nice Class A rig pulling a jeep. Her other brother Roger, who also has a Class A couldn’t make the trip this time, so we are the only two in the caravan. Does that qualify as a caravan?

We had a truly lovely relaxing morning today, after finally falling asleep during a very hot night. It was sunny and 104 degrees yesterday when we arrived at the park at 6pm. Hot, with a dry wind that made it feel like a real desert. We set up, and appreciated how easy this is getting for us now that we understand all the little details, but of course we still don’t have to do the satellite dish thing, and at this park we didn’t even have sewer, so it was all pretty quick. Steps worked, levelers worked, slide worked. I love it when things work. Funny side story however, this morning we ran out of water pressure as our fresh water tank emptied. Couldn’t figure out why, since we were supposed to be hooked up to shore water, and Mo finally found a little plug in the faucet that she had put there to keep bugs out while we were traveling. Oops, I didn’t take it out when I hooked up the water, and of course, we were just running off our water tank instead of shore water. Little things.

Dinner was about as good as you get, and fast as well. The little gas bbq that I got from Wal-Mart is still a hit, heats up fast and we had magnificent bbq’d pork chops in about 10 minutes, while I put some cole slaw together and microwaved a sweet potato. A glass of good red wine and things couldn’t be better. After dinner we took Abby swimming and discovered that the John Day River in this area is dammed up by the John Day dam enough that even though it’s deep, there isn’t enough current to worry about the dog getting carried away, so she had a great time swimming in the deep water, and then later when we took her over to the swimming beach where she kept trying to find water deep enough to swim in. The park itself is a really nice place, and we added it to the list of places where we might return and spend a few days hiking and definitely kayaking up the John Day River. Even though the park is in close proximity to the interstate, we couldn’t hear it at all down in the park, and even though the spaces are close together, they are all pointed toward the river in such a way that when you are sitting at your table, it’s still private enough that it isn’t too bad. We had a young couple with kids right next to us in a tent, and the only bad part was waking up at 530 am in a funny mood and worrying that our silly laughter might wake the neighbors.

We were waiting for Dan and Chere to arrive after 10 or so, so we had plenty of time to go for a nice hike up along a service road that paralleled the river along the middle slope of the basalt. High enough to see the rivers and trains and such, but not so high and steep that it was a difficult hike. We were entertained by flocks of chukkars running straight up the cliffs, lots of deer tracks and coyote tracks, and then Abby found a rattlesnake who obligingly gave us a great warning as we approached. Mo tried to get a photo, but I won’t know if it came out till I upload the photos.

Basalt on the Columbia Plateau and in this canyon is part of what is one of the largest continuous basalt plateaus in the world. I think the only large one is in India somewhere. The basalt has several different members with different characteristics, and different flows within individual members that have differential rates of cooling that makes them look like pillars and pillows, and little square chunks called entablature. http://www.cwnp.org/naturalist/basalt.html Then there are in between layers of pillow basalts that cooled under water, and conglomerates that were picked up from old river beds by the hot lava and all sorts of other interesting things. Of course, this area was also flooded 13,000 years ago by the catastrophic Missoula Floods, another fascinating story, so some of the very old rounded alluvial gravels that we found may have come from ancient Lake Missoula which covered a very large part of the state of Montana before the ice dam broke and created the floods. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_Floods

Regardless of the origins, the basalts are fascinating and lovely to look at while hiking along the canyons along the rivers.

Looking Forward

I am really looking forward to putting up a new photo of something more delightful than the smoke I encountered last trip out. Tomorrow we head north to Spokane with an overnight along the Columbia River at the LePage campground along I-84 at the John Day dam. Been reading reviews and with my Golden Age Pass you surely can’t beat 8.50 a night with electricity. More to come as the adventure begins.

Smoky weekend at Medicine Lake

California was incredibly smoky this weekend. When I left home in Jamestown it was reasonably clear, but by the time I reached the interstate the smoke was thick and only got thicker as I drove north. Here is a photo of what I-5 looked like north of Corning. But I had a goal, and drove through all that smoke for 380 miles to reach this perfect little gem of a lake in northern California, where Mo was already camped with the MoHo.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1216/is_n3_v181/ai_6607000

Even Mt Shasta was invisible to me as I drove the usually magnificent McCloud HWY 89 to Harris Spring Road and the final 33 miles to the lake. Once I was there, and settled in, it was worth it. Mo arrived earlier in the week on Wednesday afternoon, and managed to get a perfect spot right on the lake. Number 45. Each time we have camped here, we have been in the Hogue Campground, along the northern side of the lake, and each time we have managed a lake front site. It gets a bit more challenging with the bigger MoHo, but still at only 25.5 feet, she managed to slide in to this lovely site, and with a bit of additional leveling we had a perfect lake view, room for the awning between the trees, and amazing privacy, even though the campground was more than half full over the weekend. For bigger rigs, there are nice roomy level private sites farther uphill, but the lake view is well worth the juggling. We saw some fairly big rigs in these sites, easy and comfortable.
The best part about Medicine Lake is how uncrowded it is, even on sunny Saturday afternoons. The water is clear, and the lake rules allow speedboats between the hours of 10 and 5, so there are quiet times for kayaks and canoes and everyone is happy. We saw people doing lots of fishing, and one happy person said the fish were fairly easy to catch, they just jump on the hook when you put it out there. It is one of the few places that Mo and I really enjoy returning to when there are so many new places to visit. It’s clean and open and the camp spaces are far enough apart that most of the time it feels private and spacious. We take the boats down to the beach and leave them there for the entire visit, kayaking in the late evenings or early mornings when the winds are quiet. On this trip, there was more wind than usual, even early in the day, so our paddles were a bit restricted, and the air wasn’t as perfectly clear as it usually is, but even so, it was relaxing and a great way to spend a week, or a weekend. We hiked along the lake to the tiny little Medicine Lake and Abby thought the entire trip was just so that she could swim every day and often. Mo brought along plenty of firewood from home as well so we had some truly lovely roaring fires night and morning . Back to Jamestown Sunday evening, and just another week of work and a weekend to get ready for the Spokane trip. I can hardly wait, but in the meantime, the Medicine Lake trip was a wonderful respite from the daily dig.

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Medicine Lake Highlands

This is the lovely lake that awaits our next trip, nestled into the Medicine Lake Highlands of northern California. The serenity pictured here belies the rumble beneath the surface that may one day become part of the landscape. Geothermal energy is here, part of the very recent volcanic activity that created some of the magical features in this area, and it’s development is a controversial subject.
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MedicineLake/Locale/framework.html

For now, here’s a photo of a quiet evening spent in 2006. I guess the campfire proves I am a true camper, or at least Mo is, since she is usually in charge of the fires. Recently, Laurie of the blog “Semi-True Tales of Our Life on the Road” http://laurieandodel.blogspot.com/ said one of the differences between fulltimers and campers is that fulltimers don’t build fires. Read her very funny story about campfires and mosquitoes and Odel in a sweat shirt at 78 degrees! I have never met either of them, but Laurie’s wonderfully descriptive sharing of their life on the road is a delight and an inspiration to me. I hope to one day be a full-timer as well, and will learn much from all that she has written.