Day Four – Recalculating…

We awoke to smoke again. We could smell it through the open windows. Trying to remain optimistic, we got ready and said our goodbyes to Chris, Christina and Ananda. We will miss them and are sure to see them again soon!

Because we could smell and see the thick smoke, we wore our N95 masks under our helmets. We headed out of Joseph toward Baker on the Hells Canyon Scenic Byway and turned onto the Imnaha Hwy.

From there, we took a National Forest Road through the Hells Canyon Recreation Area. For the longest time, it was just us and some free range cattle.

We took a short detour to the Hells Canyon Overlook which is probably a remarkable site without smoke.

As we descended towards Oxbow, the smoke got thicker but we did see some fall color starting to change.

At Oxbow reservoir, we saw a bald eagle fly right over us! Trust us, it’s an eagle.

We reached Brownlee Reservoir which is fed by the Snake River. It looked like a great place to fish. The road reminded us of Hwy 1 in Northern California.

It wasn’t long before we rode into Grangeville with burning eyes smelling like a camp fire. You know when you hear the experts say that the air quality is unsafe for sensitive groups… Cathy is one of those folks. We rode through ‘Moderate’ to Unhealthy’ air the entire way. We decided to look at alternate routes but the reality is, Idaho is on fire and there was no logical work-around. Everywhere we were headed was surrounded by fire. It broke our hearts, but we decided to abandon the rest of the trip to Glacier.

We’ve come up with an abbreviated plan to head northwest to Mt. Rainier and then make our way down to Ashland, OR to spend a few nights. That is one of our happy places so it is a small consolation. We’ll have some more smoke to go through tomorrow but it shouldn’t be too long before we are out of it.

Tom has entered the alternate routes into our GPS so we’ll amend our adventure and set off to Umatilla, OR tomorrow.

Cathy’s Barn Pic of the Day