Day 4: Boise to Bozeman
What a beautiful day of driving. I’m looking through my notes and that is what I wrote over and over again… Beautiful. I winced as I reviewed the plan and saw eleven hours of driving. Boise to Bozeman on our route meant we drove over 570 miles. I would say that was a fine day of driving. We are only about 77 miles from Gardiner, which is the North entrance to Yellowstone.
Idaho is Beautiful
The road we took from Lowman to Salmon Idaho was gorgeous. It is so far my favorite part of the ride. I got to drive the twisty-turny route from Idaho City to Lowman. If you love to drive this drive is for you. This slowed down the trip quite a bit, turns sometimes 20 miles per hour, but so well worth it. Once you got past Lowman, Idaho-21 (Ponderosa Pine Scenic Byway) straightened a bit and the scenery was wonderful. We stopped for a few minutes at a campsite just a little past Lowman, called Helende in the Boise National Forest. The campsite was right against the south fork of the Payette River.
The Payette’s water was cold on my footies but very refreshing in the hot sun. The day was perfect, but unfortunately our plans were set and we couldn’t dwaddle. If we had more of a day to spend there I know I would have found myself dipping in the water, mountain cold or not.
The next town Stanley was also quite beautiful. Only a town of about 100 people, the area here looks like a great time. Between Lowman and Stanley, I could see spending a week camping out and having a good time. There was fishing, white water rafting, camping, and I even spied some hot springs. It was a perfect place and not a crowd to be seen.
Here is a photo of some rafters, out from Stanley, from Idaho-75 as it rose above the Salmon River:
Elevation and the Continental Divide
I did some looking and our little road trip so far had crossed the 45th Parallel at least three times. We have also crossed the Continental Divide twice. Although my other half’s ears have been popping due to changes in the elevation, I haven’t had that happen yet, which is curious.
So far the elevation gains have been pretty good:
Oregon Coast – Sea Level
Oregon Coast Range – Approximately 1500 ft.
Eastern Oregon – The Blue Mountains – 4900 ft
Idaho 21 – Between Idaho City and Lowman – 6046 ft
Highway 93 to Montana 43 – 7241 ft
The first time we crossed the Continental Divide I-15 Montana – 5879 ft
And then we crossed it again in Montana at 6343 ft.
We also found Wisdom on our trip… I knew I loved road trips.
Big Bug Country
My other half and I always laugh about our last trip through Montana. We had realized that as soon as we crossed the border into Montana bugs started hitting the windshield. Well… it happened again. As soon as we got a little into Montana we were grateful we bought that gallon of windshield wiper fluid.
All jokes aside, it is hard to show a picture of the “big sky” in Montana. It is pretty breath taking. I wrote note after note of ecology changes between the time we got from Idaho into Montana, perhaps I will share some later. In summary, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful…
One last set of pictures for the night
While driving through Montana we saw a herd of cattle start crossing the road…
And then the modern day cowboys following them…
Pouts… something not so romantic about that… oh well, can’t stop progress.
Tomorrow we enter the park, so I have left the blog on auto-pilot.
Type at you soon…
Articles that may interest you:
I went to grad school w/ a wonderful woman from Bozeman. Tell her I said “hi”. She was a wonderful ambassador for the place. It’s meant to be stunning. She told a story that when a group of neo nazi’s came to demonstrate in Bozeman they couldn’t legally stop it, but found an eloquent way to strike back. Everyone along the parade route displayed a menorrha in their window and at the end they had a huge sign declaring something to the effect of “Not here, Not in our town.”
Sounds like a person I would love to meet. I love the way they handled that. Unfortunately, we didn’t spend much time in Bozeman. Sounds like great people and a great town.