Picto Diary - 20, 21 June 2017 - Kamloops to Boise

On 20 June 2017 I rode the BMW F800GS motorcycle back into the United States. Kamloops, BC to Spokane, WA. 333 miles. This is a beautiful ride with two memorable segments:

1. Riding south on BC 97 along the shores of Lake Okanagan through Vernan, BC, Penicton, BC, Kelowna, BC and Osoyoos, BC. This area had an aura of industriousness and prosperity. The vineyards between Kelowna and Osoyoos were beautiful in their symmetrical green rows... close up and at a distance.

2. Riding east on WA 20 from (a tisket) Tonasket, WA to Kettle Falls, WA. The road starts in obscure, rolling ranch lands, climbs through spruce forest, along streams, to Stewart Pass, then descends to the Columbia river (Roosevelt Lake). Today's ride was the first time I had ridden this road segment.

I spent the night at the Best Western Plus in Spokane, WA.

On 21 June 2017 I rode from Spokane, WA to Boise, ID, 426 miles. Three memorable segments on this ride.

1. US 195 from Spokane, WA to Lewiston, ID through Washington's Palouse farm land. Palouse means "lawn" in French (the actual French spelling is Pelouse). The name of this area is apt as there are now rolling fields of green wheat seen in all directions... a spectacular and unique site. This is some of the most fertile farming area in the US. The top soil in the Palouse is fifteen feet deep at places.

2. US 95 from Lewiston, ID to McCall, ID. The spectacular 2000 foot descent into Salmon River Canyon. The steep descent into the bottom of the canyon reminded me of a similar river canyon descent in in 2008 when I rode a Honda Africa Twin motorcycle in a 3000 foot descent into Blue Nile Canyon in Ethiopia.

3. ID 55 from McCall, ID to Boise, ID following roaring, white water, Payette River. Class five rapids for thirty miles. I didn't see any kayaks or rafts... probably for good reason: really raging high water.

I spent the night of 21 June 2017 at the Bond Apartment Hotel, Boise, ID. Ugh (scroll).

Above: BMW F800 GS. West Kelona, BC. 20 June 2017.

Rest stop. Gas. Snack.

Rubber on this Hidenau rear tire looks good after 5000 miles of riding. I could probably ride this rear tire safely to 8000 miles. On my Duc Multistrada, I ride on Pirelli Scorpion trail tires. I can't get more than 4500 miles on the rear tire.

Other bike functions performing fine. I've been lucky that the F800 GS has not had mechanical issues during the trip. In the built up areas where I'm riding now, it wouldn't be difficult to find a tow truck and/or motorcycle mechanic should something mechanical stymie the ride. Knock on wood.

Invariably, on a trip like this you run into riders who have been waylaid by mechanical problems. Oddly, in the last two years of riding in BC, YT and AK, the waylaid riders I have run into have been Germans. Last year was the German, riding an F800GS on Hidenau's, like me, who had a ruined rear tire. He was holed up in Toad River, BC on the Alaska Highway waiting for a new tire to be shipped from San Francisco.

And, then, remember this trip, in Teslin, YT, the German couple riding the '95 BMW PD with the disabled starter. They'd always have to park on a hill, or, after getting fuel, ask for help with a push. They had had a new starter shipped from Denver to Dawson, to await their arrival there.

Up in northern BC and YT where points of civilization are separated by a minimum of 150 miles... with no cell service in between, I might have no other option other than to abandon the bike by the side of the road and hitching a ride as a "resolution" to any serious mechanical problem.

As I say, fortunate, if not lucky... re mechanical incidents.

Stories along the road.

Bishop at Spencer's steakhouse in Spokane, WA.

At bar. Ribeye and Malbec. Mushroom and brochollini sides. First class prime steak (hat tip Big Data Social Security deduction) and service.

Regional sales manager for Kenworth, from Seattle, on the left, geezer man and wife of a certain age, pension fund contract auditors, both CPAs, from Great Falls, MT, on the right.

Bishop asks question to female bartender: What's happening in Spokane besides John Stockton and Gonzaga basketball?

After laughter around the bar subsides, Kenworth says, raison d'etre for Spokane is agriculture.

Peterbilt and Kenworth have same owners (public), but still view one another as competitors. Kenworth produces 300K new copies a year. Average MSRP for tractor: $120K. Peterbilt and Kenworth have 25% of market between them. Highest share? Freightliner. "One of my biggest customers is SLC's C. R. England. I go to SLC all the time." Owner operators of single trucks diminishing as percent of total market.

Pension Fund Auditors: 10 years ago, employers used to cheat the pension funds. Not so much today.

Above: BMW F800 GS's right pannier. Lewiston, ID. 21 June 2017.

The stickers remind of TIMDT's and Mwah's (sic) motorcycle ride (BMW R1200 GS) through Georgia and into Russia (also Armenia, Azerbaijan, and eastern Turkey) in 2014.

The lower two stickers are from stops on this ride. Dawson, YT and Chicken, AK.

Lewiston, ID is where the Clearwater River and the Snake River conjoin (both rivers taken by Lewis and Clark). Lewiston, named for Meriwether Lewis, is a "port" city where farm products, mainly wheat, are loaded onto barges which make their way, via the Snake River, to the Columbia River at Tri Cities.

One doesn't think of Idaho having a port city with navigable access to the Pacific Ocean.

Its hard, in fact, to come up with one identity for the state of Idaho.

Here in Lewiston we are in farm country, part of the same fertile area as Washington's Palouse. Lewiston, in fact, may see itself more part of the Washington farm economy than any place in Idaho as it is the only part of Idaho which is in the Pacific time zone.

Further to the northeast is the Idaho Panhandle which area seems to have more in common with forested areas of the northwest US and British Columbia.

Central Idaho is Rocky Mountain craggy and remote. Squint in Sun Valley and you might think you are in Aspen or Telluride.

Southern Idaho with its deep Mormon heritage and farming/ranching economy seems to have more in common with Utah than with any other portion of Idaho.

Boise the capital. Latte town. Voire Boulder, CO, Madison, WI. Patagonia bobos.

Idaho reminds me of Florida which is also distinctively segmented regionally.

Florida doppelgangers:

South Florida: New York City, Rio de Janeiro
West Coast Florida: Chicago, Minneapolis
North Florida: Dallas, Birmingham

Above: Salmon River. US 95, Idaho. 21 June 2017.

Ten miles north of Riggins, ID

The Salmon River will flow into the Snake River, seen earlier in the day in Lewiston, ID, about 20 miles north of this point. Both rivers here are flowing northbound, parallel to one another, only eight miles apart. The Snake, to the west of here, is flowing through Hells Canyon National Recreation Area. The western side of Hells Canyon is in Oregon.

Throughout my trip the flow of all the rivers I have seen has been robust.

The Thompson, in southern BC, a tributary of the Fraser, was overflowing its banks ten days ago when I was there.

The spillways at St. Joseph Dam on the Columbia River were maxed out when I saw the dam two weeks ago.

The Yukon and its tributaries, the Stewart and the Pelly, were flowing to the brim.

Paradox. In BC, Yukon and Alaska, there is water, water, everywhere, yet, no population. In the southwestern United States there is relatively little water to supply one of America's most populous regions.

Above: Bond Hotel. Boise, ID. 21 June 2017.

Boise has always been a difficult town for me to orient myself. I had an orientation melt down of sorts in Boise today.

I didn't have reservations in Boise, so I stopped at a Starbucks in Eagle to search for a motel/hotel on my device.

There were no Best Westerns near down town, and the Best Western Plus in Meriden was sold out.

I went to Expedia. I wanted to go downtown. Maybe I could find a good steakhouse near the hotel, find some conversation at the bar, and get a few walking steps in before I went to bed.

The Bond Hotel popped up as a downtown hotel with a discounted room price. I booked the Bond Hotel with cavalier, serendipitous, insouciance.

I had a hard time finding the place. Did I mention that my Garmin had popped out of its holder a couple of days ago on BC 97 near Kelowna? So, sans Garmin I went to my next navigation option. I entered the Bond Hotel address into my Google Navigation on my phone, but, I had no way of monitoring the route as I rode since I had to keep the phone in my jacket pocket. Ear phones and a cord might have made using the Google navigation easier... but, I was unprepared in this regard.

So, I would have to stop, check the route, start out, stop again when I thought I had reached an intersection way point, and so on.

This stop start method didn't work very well, and because of my lack of orientation in the city, and, because I thought the hotel was "downtown" as was mentioned in Expedia, I spent twenty or thirty minutes making wrong turns.

Finally, I gave up on Google Navigation and, while stopped on a side street, called up Google Maps to find an actual map showing where I was and where the hotel was.

The Bond Hotel was not "downtown." It was on the periphery of downtown... in a residential neighborhood. It was less a hotel and more an extended living apartment hotel. It looked pretty run down for even the "discounted" the price I had agreed to with Expedia.

I walked into the office. There was a young man wearing cargo shorts, seated in a dented up folding chair with his sneaker shorn feet up on a scratched up, cluttered, Office Depot special, steel desk. The kid had his face in his device. Though I was the only customer in the cluttered office, he didn't look up from his handheld until at least thirty seconds after I came in.

He had my reservation on his computer.

"I'm going to put a $300 hold on your credit card," he said. I don't know about the amount, but, I thought, "pre authorizations" are standard procedure for hotel check-ins. However, the surly way he mentioned it and the disorganized and less than professional nature of the office got me to wondering whether I was being set up. Would I get charged $100 for a "lost" hotel key, say?

"Your room is either in the first or second building in "that direction," he said, after handing me a standard brass key.

I paused... I didn't remember seeing more than one building... the one we were in. "I didn't see any building other than this one," I said.

"Well," he said pointing, "your room is that way... I'm not sure what floor its on."

"Is there a restaurant within walking distance?" I asked.

"Uh... there's a Mexican Restaurant a couple of blocks down that way (he pointed to the main road I had ridden in on). Its open 24 hours."

My room was on the ground floor just next to the office. There was only one building as I had remembered as I had parked my bike, but there were several sections of the building, each with a ground floor and a second floor apartment unit. The building and my bike are in the image accompanying this narrative.

After unloading the motorcycle and getting my stuff transferred into a dark, dingy, well worn suite room, I walked off looking for the twenty four hour Mexican restaurant.

Much closer to the hotel than two blocks, was a 24 hour Mexican restaurant that was empty... boarded up. I thought, well, maybe these people moved to another location closer to the "two blocks" the hotel guy had indicated. Why would the kid, I thought to myself, send me to a boarded up restaurant?

I walked five blocks and found nothing.

The street where I was making my search intersected Orchard Road, a fairly important thoroughfare in Boise. I looked up the road and within the half mile range there appeared to be some commercial establishments.

In fact, about a half mile up there was a Chinese restaurant, Star Restaurant.

I went into Star Restaurant on Orchard Road. It was pretty crowded. The restaurant interior looked like it had been last renovated in 1947.

I ordered steamed rice, Kung Pao chicken, chop sticks and a rice bowl. The food wasn't bad.

After eating, I walked about a mile back to the Bond hotel and went to bed. In a way, I was glad that TIMDT wasn't with me at the Bond hotel. She would have lain awake all night on top of the bed with all of her clothes on, not enjoying the stay at all.

Addendum:


Steve quite fascinating. Two Indian restaurants in Kamloops, BC!!

Happy journeying.

Saker,
Mumbai, India


I always enjoyed thoroughly the area you were writing about today; we had some super times and great Five-star meal’s at Post Hotel, I still remember you finding the lost wedding ring. I can remember that the individuals working in the hotel knew us by name, as did a few of those Black bears. -:)

Mr. Z3,
Ojai, CA,