When Pigs Fly Solo Tour

Love it! Keep it coming...

John

More quotable quotes from Greenflyfarmer!



Awesome Karl!

Actually I'm running a sale on signatures. For 99 cents a month, you can add that one and be cool as a middle aged short man can be.

It may take more than that for this middle aged tall fat guy to be cool though.

havin fun?
I should have followed ya.

Well you knew about it. Maybe next time?
I'm gonna call the the next big tour
Over My Dead Body! Tour

I know I know.. But I didnt want to mess up the solo part of the title .
How ya holding up on the trip? Saddle sore?

No, been home a week. I shouldn't have given away that I lived through it. Mess up the suspense.

Rain swept away and blue sky in the morning. The pig is drippy. Laundry done last night, fresh clothes and fresh skies.

Head west to La Barge. Long pavement ride through the high desert of Wyoming. Nothing for miles. Finally see a historical sign. Hill of Names, the first mountian men
left their names carved in the rock here. Big beaver trapping area at the time.

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Hit LaBarge and gas up. 50's style diner for a big breakfast, it's nice to warm up on eggs, gravy biscuits, pancake and coffee. It was cold coming across the big nothing. Ranchers talk stock, well drillers and muddy boots, small talk with waitress and folks nearby. They know my road to Alpine. Might be muddy, hard rains recently. Left a couple of bucks and the waitress comes to the door and says thanks, ride safe, as I pull on gloves.

I find my road, I'd passed it on the way in. Take a right into hills and my spirit soars. It starts off looking like cattle country over the mountian from my father's farm.

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Soon I pass cowboys working cattle. I want a picture but they are working and I'm playing and some odd pride thing keeps me from a great photo.

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Boy it's nice here.

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This is the crest here and then I'll find the tributary of the Snake.

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That's the beginning of the Snake.

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Cowboys working hard on this end too. I get caught up in a flood of cows coming down the road, I'm surrounded and slowly push through. The herd has seen my kind before, they are not impressed.

At the end I gas up in Alpine. Huge lake here they made out of the Snake. It's cool and spitting rain and I cross into Idaho. This road is easily one of the most beautiful of the trip.

Below the dam I'm on pavement and I start looking for dirt west. Forest Service roads show up on the GPS and cut across to Idaho Falls. Pavement follows the river. A quick left and suddenly I'm among friends. Dirt bikes are every where, kids on bikes, couples on ATVs, campers and toy haulers. It's July 3 and people are starting to play. I pick up the pace as the crowd thins out. It's not very scenic, but it's fast, farms, ranches, a wind farm on the height.
I keep moving and ride into Idaho Falls.

Note the clouds in the distant west past Idaho Falls.

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I gas up and buy a meal to pack, and head west across lava fields. The weather closes in and the wind picks up. I change course and ride south and get caught in a crazy wind. I make the easterner mistake and get a room. It's bad for 90 minutes then it's over, blown out. I decide if it happens again that I'll just grab a meal and wait until it's over, then ride. Oh well, I'm learning about these afternoon storms out here.

Really enjoying this report...thanks for taking the time to put it together!

Thanks. After all this time and I figure out SmugMug works! I joined today after being on the free ride for a week.

SmugMug is good. As are your report and outstanding photos!

Thanks for sharing, looks like it was a lot of fun!!!

I gotta say your pictures make our part of the country seem small and crowded :eek1 maybe it was the low ceiling that day...

Keep it coming, I know there's more

When you say Idaho I think potato. Before I came to know Idaho that would be all I thought but now I love Idaho.

Last afternoon the wind was scary, pushing me out of my lane as I tried to out run the storm south. I hit an exit with a lodging promise, RV and tent camping, hotel rooms. I pull into an empty hotel parking lot. Lights on in rooms and I see, paint buckets, open doors, mud buckets and strips of old wall to wall. Windows open, no one around. The office is dark and a phone rests on the door bar. A Phone number and scrawled message urges me to call, unless I have an RV, then I should get a space and call in the morning.

The wind howls and debris swirls outside the door and I call. A young woman's voice tells me her physical presence is ten minutes away. Pacing in the lot, looking at the sky and I decide to push the pig under the deep eave, pannier scrubs lightly on the wall. A SUV wheels into the lot and hasty questions are asked as the wind snatches sound away. A couple enter and I buy a room for thirty dollars and change. I bargain for an empty room to camp in cheap but settle for the one I'm sold. Dry wall dust shows my boot prints on the floor, I settle in and they leave. Sip whisky, sleep good and long. Storm gone before dark and I could have gained another 100 miles easy but it worked out. My room is late 70's motif. I know I was there.

Morning is misty in the potato fields west of town. Tractors hide in long sheds, built half way below ground with dirt piled up on the roof. Big round bales of hay, smashed on the verge of the road, smell of hay as I pass.

The lava fields are lonely. Eventually a mountian range appears in the hazy distance on my right. Two sentinal mountians, solitary on my left. The first nuclear reactor in the country and it's gift shop on my left. Then breakfast at the first town, which is a long way from Idaho Falls. I eat at the first joint while a parade stages outside.
I figure out that it's the 4th of July. Eat and talk to bikers in the diner.


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Two Harley girls that ride, from Idaho, talk about the biker rally in the next town west. Look at my map and tell me about the mining roads above that town. So does the lady at the gas stop. Folks are proud of that old mine and ghost town, I'll check it out. Sounds like dirt. Move on.

Amazing, thanks for sharing.

I leave Arco for Mackay. Harleys everywhere, rally visible through the trees and houses on my left. Mackay is a small town, trying to make the most of what they have for the mototourist. On the right heading west, they have a whole parking area for dirt bikes and 4 wheelers. The map there directs me back across town (1/2 mile tops) to the mining ruins on the hill above. The views were very nice of the valley below.

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The mine ruins are actually several mines if not more. Some of the mines were worked up until the late 70's.

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ATV roads start out easy and get tighter toward the top of the mountian.

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I decided to turn around after wrestling my over loaded pig through a tight switch back, those are my bain. I'm too short to reach in off camber situations and it leaves no room for error.

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Fantastic

I leave Mackay happy. It's a beautiful day, I made it back to the mountians and it's starting to get more fun.

West beyond Mackay the river in the valley I ride is the Lost River. Lots of beaver were trapped there in the old days and they trapped ALL of them out in just a very short time. I learn from a road side sign that it's the Lost River because it just disappears in the lava fields.

The valley narrows after Mackay then opens up into a huge area. I'm looking for a dirt pass on my left and I come to it. Pavement leads to fast, wide straight dirt heading toward the mountian.

It's pretty here, small camp grounds on both sides. People fishing the river, riding horses, hanging out. The road goes higher and then, there it is, Sun Valley Idaho.
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Pedal bikers in lycra huff up hill. I'll see more people riding pedal bikes in Sun Valley than anywhere else I travel. Now if I was a young single man, which I'm not, I'd get a bike and ride the bike paths in Sun Valley. I have it on good authority that you will become fit there.