August 8 - Lewiston, ID to Boise, ID - 280 miles

The first order of business today was to ride up and down "Lewiston Hill", a very steep and curvy road with lots of hairpin turns.  

It's now called the "Spiral Highway".  The "old road" was first constructed in 1914 when steep, curvy, and hairpin turns were OK for the cars of the day.  Of course, it was upgraded as time went on.

As we said in our last report, Deane drove up and down this road, in both good weather and bad, going from Boise to the University of Idaho at Moscow, Idaho (about 40 miles north of Lewiston).  The "new road" totally bypasses the hairpin turns, is much wider, but quite a bit steeper.  

So, we went UP the "old road" and DOWN the "new road".  What a view from the top!  Incidentally, the part about "Steamboats" on one of the signs in the photo refers to the fact that steamboats used to come up the Columbia River as far as Lewiston, where the Snake River empties into the Columbia.

Our objective today was to ride to Boise, where Deane was born and raised, and where he still has brothers and other relatives living. Also the plan was to ride down a major part of Idaho, from north to south, since Norm had never been in Idaho.

As we progressed toward Boise, we came upon places around Grangeville, ID where farmers were burning wheat stubble, and so had quite a plume of smoke.  Further on, we passed out of this area and into mountainous areas where there was quite a bit more smoke, but not from fields being burned.  We then realized that this smoke was coming from forest fires in Idaho.  This continued down through Riggins, ID.

At Riggins, we came to the Salmon River.  The canyon of the Salmon River runs beside the road for quite a ways, and is very rugged.

By the time we reached Payette Lake, a very beautiful big blue lake surrounded by pine-forested mountains, the smoke had cleared from the forest fire and the view was splendid.

Riding on down the Payette River toward Boise, we saw many river rafters having a good time in the white water.  We hit some more construction, with nice muddy tracks, and all of a sudden the bikes were brown again.  It got hotter and hotter, until in Boise, the temperature reached  102^o F.  This may not seem bad to some of you, but since we were used to 50 to 60^o F temperatures just a few days ago, it seemed awfully hot to us.

As we rode into town, we looked up the Honda shop and purchased oil to change in the motorcycles again.  We had ridden together just under 9,000 miles since leaving Albuquerque, and of course Norm had ridden nearly 2,000 miles getting to Albuquerque.  So, a little rest is in the cards.

Norm will take one day off, and then head on home to Ohio, by way of Wisconsin to visit some relatives.  Deane will stay in Boise for three days to visit relatives, and then head home to Albuquerque.

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