Phase III: Central Idaho

Winchester Lake was a nice park, but with the usual stinky, eye-watering state park campfires that seemed to serve no purpose with temperatures into the high 20s Celsius late into the evening. Some, obviously, were for cooking unidentifiable and odoriferous meals, and, we expect, for burning the plastic packaging and left-overs afterwards. Still, we were happy to find vacancies on a weekend, to avoid sketchy stealth camping.

Early Sunday morning, we broke camp and headed south, stopping at Grangeville to do laundry at a friendly neighborhood laundromat. Moving on, we stopped at Stacy Cakes bakery in McCall, lunching on cinnamon rolls, scones, and coconut macaroons–not a healthy lunch, but a favorite stop, so we indulged. Driving down the scenic ID 55 along the Payette River, we arrived at Judy’s brother’s house in late afternoon, for a few day’s visiting. On hooking up the van for a few days’ “moochdocking,” we discovered we had driven off from the Heyburn campground without disconnecting our 40-foot electrical cord, the second time we’ve lost one that way. To prevent that in the future, I decided to put the cord reel in front of the drivers seat so we can’t drive away without it. We still have 50-feet of cord, but yet another expense, should we replace the long one.

We also stopped at hardware stores along the way to stock up on M6-20 socket-head bolts for the bicycle, which hold the pieces together. I had broken one of the bolts when adjusting the timing chain tension before our mid-TCdA ride, but we had ridden anyway, figuring two bolts made for redundancy. I had to loosen the other bolt and spread the tabs to align the holes for the new bolt. At least we now have spares for all the bolts on the bike, the others mostly M4 and M5 of different lengths. We had to replace a rear rack bolt a few weeks ago, during a ride.

After two days of visiting with Judy’s brother’s family, we headed north, up Hwy 95. We stopped for lunch at Council, where, years before, we had ridden our bike on the Weiser River Trail, a ride cut short because the trail was washed out north of town. Moving on, we arrived back at Winchester Lake State Park, where we had stayed Saturday night. This time, it was very quiet, with the main hookup loop closed for the winter and few sites taken in the dry camp loop and yurts. Being off-season, we paid $9 less than we had the previous week. The lake was populated with a large population of geese and ducks, which we observed on a walk into town for ice cream at the gas station/liquor store/C-store, the only business in the tiny (200 pop.) town.

With the campground at 3900 ft elevation, the temperature dropped outside after sunset, but more slowly inside: we woke at dawn with the van at 9 C (48 F) and the outside temperature at minus 2 C (28 F). On the road, the temperature rose rapidly as we descended into Lewiston, and didn’t drop much as we climbed up the other side on US 95 toward Coeur d’ Alene. We finally stopped for breakfast at the only rest stop along the route, Near McCroskey State Park. We took a side excursion into the park, thinking the ridge road had a view, but instead it was a steep one-lane gravel road on the side of a steep, deeply wooded ridge: we turned around at the first opportunity, which was way too far up for Judy’s innate fear of cliff-hanging narrow roads.

(to be continued)