- November 20, 2011
- 38 photos


After seeing it alone while motorcycling, I knew the rest of the family would be excited to explore the peculiar landscape of Jordan Craters, made stranger by a skiff of snow.
After seeing it alone while motorcycling, I knew the rest of the family would be excited to explore the peculiar landscape of Jordan Craters, made stranger by a skiff of snow.
“Special” Ed leads four of us through his old stomping grounds along the Owyhee River and Reservoir. I’m the only one without a KLR. We find evidence related to a homicide and visit Leslie Gulch before I part from the group for an eerie night visit to Jordan Craters.
Jessica and I ride over the Boise Ridge, visit the museum in Placerville then have lunch in Garden Valley before attempting to summit Scott Mountain. Snow stops us but the effort means it’s dark by the time we reach Sourdough Lodge where we spend the night.
After yesterday’s trail troubles, we take the easy but long road from Elsie on our way to Crystal Lake only to find the final trail too narrow and steep for riding. With day’s end approaching, we hustle to find an acceptable alternative, finally settling in for a beautiful sunset over Benewah Lake.
We see great country even as we face a day of dead-ends, one after another, trying to make our way to Wallace then Elsie Lake. Logging operations blocked three routes, sending us through the woods or miles around. It is nearly dark when we’re finally able to set up camp.
From Crater Peak we venture to areas unknown around Monument Buttes before taking lunch in Avery and heading north of the St. Joe River for the first time. We ride through the several Moon Pass tunnels before staking a claim up Loop Creek.
My brothers and I set out for our fourth annual motorcycle camping ride in the mountains of North Idaho. For the first day, we revisit our favorite subalpine ridge site behind Clarkia.
Her college orientation complete, Laura and I begin the ride back to Boise as far as light allows, past and future connected by penumbral roads.
I use a day I have to myself, while my mom is at work and Laura at college orientation, to tour around my boyhood school and home, my memories, in Troy, Idaho.
While Laura spends the day visiting with my mom and her friends, my brother Jesse leads us on a ride over Moscow Mountain to forest trails around Laird Park.
My oldest daughter Laura and I ride two-up three hundred miles north on winding highways and back roads to Moscow and Pullman where she will begin the next chapter of her life as a student at Washington State University.
Greenhorn Ben joins me for an overnight ride along Hell’s Canyon on our way to North Idaho, me for a high school reunion and Ben to see family. We enjoy a beautiful view of the Seven Devils from our campsite on the lip of the canyon.
My mom and daughter joined me for an attempted hike around America’s tallest free standing sand dune.
I meet up with a new rider, Ben, for a ride south across hills arid and unknown to us around Big Jacks Creek and beyond toward Nevada. We explore a homestead and Zeno Falls before struggling to find the route home.
A rare ride with Kayla to Initial Point then Swan Falls Dam and across the desolate Birds of Prey area to Grand View and much needed dinner at the Black Sands Resort along the C.J. Strike Reservoir. We only fall over once.
I join Phil, Ryan, Sam and Tyson for a little of Idaho’s Centennial Trail along the Bruneau and an overnight along hot springs. The road into the canyon conspires with morning snow to mean us harm.
Brenna visited Upper Hulls Gulch when she was three days old. She seemed to like it. It seems just the thing to get her and all of us out of the house amidst grey winter days.
I ride my bicycle through heavy fog along the Boise River towards an uncertain future in a somewhat obvious metaphor.
Warm and partly sunny January weather beckons us outdoors to traipse among the sticks and leaves along the river near our house.