Inhabiting Idaho

2020, a year of closures due to the Covid 19 pandemic, has thrown many curve balls to almost any world citizen’s carefully crafted travel plans.

Ryan and I were thrown one as we tried to decide whether or not to visit our friends and loved ones in San Diego, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho after our bike trip from the Georgia coast to San Diego, CA. We pondered the question: How serious is this Covid virus? Should we risk infecting ourselves? Would we risk infecting our lives one? Where should we go to get away from the madness?

We settled on avoiding contact with anyone, faithfully wearing masks, and heading to the Treasure Valley in Idaho to stay with my grandma, Nancy Henry, who is a gracious, generous, and fun host, on her spacious property. After a quarantine period in her shop, we spent two fantastic months eating to our heart’s content, running on the canal banks, camping, relaxing, gardening, playing cards and Settlers of Catan, listening to 100 Gecs, painting, petting cats (and getting bit by them!), and soaking in time with family in the country.

We enjoyed lots of time with my aunt, uncle, cousins, and their families. Shout out to Randy, Lisja, Faith, Kamden, Bradan, Katie, Calvin, Hudson, Peyton, Kayla, Jeff, Anne, Quinten, Wesley, Anika, Dawson, Ami, and Kenyon Brothers. We love you all and now have so many good memories of our time together to carry with us wherever we go!

We did a little bit of work on the visit like washing cars at Bro’s Auto, owned and run by my aunt and uncle, building a chicken coup and pruning trees in exchange for home cooked dinners, and working for a week to sell illegal areal fireworks to Idahoans who are willing to fork over hundreds of dollars for the festive explosives. 🎇 We has a blast!

The Continental Divide Trail

Our second 2020 curve ball came in the form of closed National Parks which made it impossible to legally hike the Pacific Crest Trail like we were hoping. Thankfully, our country has two other border to border trails: The Appalachian Trail and The Continental Divide Trail.

We chose the Continental Divide which is the most rural and rugged of the three and conveniently located 12 hours away from where we were staying in Idaho.

While staying in Nampa, ID we sprinkled in plenty of training for our upcoming hike and spent lots of time in the Idaho Wilderness. It was fun to get some perspective on just how rural Idaho is as we headed into the biggest protected wilderness area in the lower 48 states, the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area and surrounding National Forests where one can enjoy walking all day in the cleanest air you can find, not encountering one other person on the trail.

This wetted our thirst for secluded mountain ranges and kept the fire of desire for a cross country hike burning even as we enjoyed comforts we had missed on our bike trip like a bed, social interaction, cooked food, and running water.

About the Trail

The CDT is about 3,100 miles long stretching from Canada to Mexico and is estimated to take 5 months of hiking around 20 miles a day to complete. It goes through about 35 “towns,” some of which barely qualify, and is hiked by 400 or so people a year. This is a much smaller number than the thousands who hike the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail.

We unfortunately have to start our journey just south of the Canadian border, outside of Glacier National Park which is still closed due to the Cornavirus. Waiting for it to open would mean pushing our start date back much too far to make it through Colorado before snow starts covering the mountains. No thank you!

We left Nampa, Idaho on July 5th, drove a ways down a secluded highway in a rental mini copper (which I love!), then encountered a big rock slide forcing us to backtrack. We took advantage of the reroute and added another day to our trip to stay the night with my mom, dad, and sister nearby in Washington. What a nice send off before our big journey!

Ryan and I are currently driving through Idaho on our way to Montana, winding through mountain roads covered in pine trees. Tonight we will drop off our rental car in Kalispell, MT. Our hope is to begin walking from there on the road with our thumbs out and hitch a ride to the trail to begin the first section of our hike: 200 miles through the Flathead National Forest to the first town where we will resuply.

Here goes nothing!

Expect blog posts infrequently, I will post as service becomes available but plan to still write every day while on the trail.