And a Lot of Idaho Talk Story and Photos by Max Jenkins When we left Idaho in June 1967, the sign at the outskirts of Boise read: “Population, 36,800 something.” Meridian’s population was about twenty-two hundred and mostly
This Time, with a Little Help By Khaliela Wright I sat back in my chair and smiled at Bruce across the top of my wine glass. Outside, a spring squall was whipping up white-capped waves on Lake Coeur
A Far-Flung Family Struck by Floods By Khaliela Wright It rained for forty days and forty nights. Okay, that’s not entirely accurate. Some of those days it snowed. The point is there was a lot of water all
Into the Backcountry By Chyrle Bonk Not on my new sleeping bag!” I exclaimed, as my husband Scott helped to change our son’s diaper in our tent in Dworshak State Park in the middle of the night. Anyone
Coastal Forest Thriving in Idaho Story and Photos by Dennis Pence Bob, a forester for one of what I call the alphabet agencies, sat in the passenger seat of the pickup as we drove to the Grandad area
When I arrived in Idaho more than forty years ago, I swore I would not allow myself to fall prey to the allure and blandishments of fly-fishing enthusiasts. I would not yield to the mystique. I felt the whole business was too darned precious, a tad too hoity-toity. Also, fly fishing would doubtless require a pricey set of waders, a costly fly rod, a broad array of feathery insects (not cheap), and exotic volumes of arcana dating back to Sir Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton. If I were to “get involved” with this ostensibly fair maiden, it could prove risky in various ways. Instead of the reliable, stationary, bank-fishing mistress I’d courted over the years, I would find myself incessantly rambling along the banks of rivers and creeks, splashing across snot-slippery rocks in icy mountain streams. I would fall head over heels, and not necessarily in love. I would need to access an entirely different langue d’amour having to do with everything from tippets to matching the hatch, from roll-casting to where-the-hell-did-that-willow-come-from? She seemed out of my league. I could imagine myself whispering regretfully one evening as the mayflies hatched and I tied on a Light Cahill with my newly-mastered clinch knot, “This is getting too complicated.” Continue reading
When I hear my college roommates talk about Idaho, they usually don’t give it the respect it deserves. They think it’s all desolate flatlands consisting mostly of potato fields mixed with sagebrush and perhaps an occasional small town. I laugh to myself. It’s best they think that way. But I have a vision of my home state that is something quite different.
I was born and raised in the Boise area, a city boy and an only child, but I have a large extended family filled with outdoorsy people, and my parents quickly made me aware of the small towns, farmland, mountains, and desert within our state. Now that I’m a twenty-one-year-old sophomore at Utah State University, whenever I’m not in class, I’m usually skiing or hiking in the nearby mountains.
Last summer, I came home intent on working, but instead of flipping hamburgers, sitting in a cubicle, or answering inbound telephone calls like most other students, I ended up with the world’s best summer job. There were pristine lakes, dazzling rivers, and mountains filled with pine trees as far as my eyes could see. I was in a place where the sunshine strained to touch ground that was dominated by bushes with leaves big enough to almost cover my laptop. There were huckleberries, millions of pine needles, and some of the sweetest smells ever. Continue reading
The Magruder Corridor. Every serious adventure motorcyclist in Idaho knows the name. A must-do ride, it starts about seventeen miles out of Elk City, which has the last gas for more than 130 miles to Darby, Montana.
Extending through the Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness and the Gospel Hump Wilderness, the road is literally a corridor, open for a short window of time when the snows have melted around mid-July until they return in October. Based on the old Nez Perce Southern Trail, the corridor became frequented by miners and travelers during the Gold Rush days of the early 1860s. It is named after Lloyd Magruder, who in 1863 was ambushed and murdered on the trail by robbers posing as friendly travelers.
I’ve had a passion for motorcycle riding and exploring since my boyhood in Pocatello. I was eight in 1975, when I learned to ride my Aunt Sandra’s Indian 80. I rode that bike as much as possible over the next nine years, exploring the roads and trails from Pocatello Creek to Inkom. For three years, a couple of buddies and I had planned to ride the Magruder. In 2012, we were on the doorstep in Elk City before a mechanical failure caused us to abort the mission. In 2013, our August trip was torched by forest fires. This year, we enlisted a couple more guys and moved up the schedule to late July, hoping to avoid fires and snow. Our plan was to ride the Magruder to Montana, and then to loop back to Idaho on the Lolo Motorway. I began researching the motorway, and liked what I learned. It’s a historic route following roughly the same Nez Perce trail that Lewis and Clark traveled on their voyage to the Pacific Ocean in 1805. Research materials described it as a “narrow, rocky and steep” dirt road over more than a hundred miles through the forest. That’s an ideal description for adventure motorcycle terrain.
Adventure motorcycles—or dual sports as they are often called—are street-legal motorcycles built for off-road riding. They vary in engine size, weight, and off-road capability. I chose a 250cc motorcycle for this trip while three of my riding companions were on 650ccs and one on an 800cc. I would have to push my bike harder to keep up with the big bikes on the paved highways, but it would more than compensate when the road turned to dirt. Continue reading
