A missed turn, Idaho and the beautiful smells, I mean, sights of America

Headed west yet again out of Bozeman, Montana.  The sky was clear and the air brisk.  I had to scrape the car windshield for the first time this year.  I'm sure that will be a very normal thing in Alaska.  I saw pictures on Facebook tonight from people in the mid west getting snow.  Glad we missed that although we did have some in Wyoming.  We took I90 out of Bozeman and followed it up and over some mountains.  The hills are rocky and bare with some pines on top.  The highway twists over the mountains then twists down the other side quite steep at times.  Coming down off one mountain we

Butte, Montana rail yard

could see a large city below us.  Butte, Montana spread out before us in the wide valley.  The euphemisms were flying about the car as we discussed the proper pronunciation  of the town so we decided to pull of and explore a little.  How often does one get to visit a city name Butte. The lady at the visitor center was really nice and directed us up to uptown (downtown Butte).  It was up a steep hill.  Butte is a copper mining town where 90% of the worlds copper comes from.  It has a deep unsightly open pit mine adjacent to the town.  It used to have 100,000 residents but now boasts only 30,000. It was evident as there were quite a few depressed areas.  After a whorl wind tour of uptown Butte, we hopped back on the interstate and headed back over the mountains.

In between the mountains the valleys are wide and flat with the hill tops rising in the distance.  They are covered with green and yellow pines.  Yellow aspens filed the valley floor in copses of trees.  The whole scene was laid out in tan, green and yellow.  Herds of black cattle grazed in the fields among stacks of round hay bales. Two hours later we again topped a mountain and saw Missoula, Montana below us in the distance.  This was our destination for lunch and a quick stop at Best Buy for a camera filter used for landscapes shots that we had been discussing.  After lunch we headed west again on I90.  This seems to have been our theme thus so far for most of the trip.  About twenty miles down the road and engaged in the usual in depth conversation about absolutely nothing that no one else would probably care about, we decided to consult the map to see where our turn off was.  We had decided to not have a destination but to take Route 12 through Idaho.  This is supposed to be a scenic byway.  Upon reading the map, it was discovered that our turn off was in fact in Missoula twenty miles behind us!  We made a U turn and headed back toward Missoula shaking our headed the whole way.  In Missoula, we found our exit and new route.  The same exit we got off of for lunch.  We drove right past the Subway and Best Buy we were at before.  It was like having dejavu all over again.  The drive through Generica (Generic America that unfortunately comprises every large population center in this country any more and comprises every corporate chain known to mankind) was very congested.  Out of Missoula we finally drove out of the remnants of mass humanity and passed through Lolo, Montana and headed up a winding narrow valley that wound its way between the peaks.

Moose crossing signs appeared along the highway yet the moose did not get the memo to cross there when we drove through. None were seen. We followed a small creek and the road twisted up the valley.  The drive was beautiful on Route 12 as we wound up over Lolo Pass and cresting the summit we were greeted with a sign stating "Entering Idaho and Pacific Standard Time Zone".  We're making progress.  At the closed rest stop at the top of the pass we talked to an older couple from Missoula with a large touring Harley that were out enjoying a the cool cloud free day to get in one last ride before the snow set in here in the mountains.

Once over Lolo Pass and into Idaho the road wound down the other side of the mountain and into a deep dark valley.  The sun did not reach the valley floor so the lighting combined with the lack of places to pull off  the narrow road did lend itself to taking pictures.  We did find a few places but for the most part drove slowly down the valley passing very few travelers.  The tall mountains were colored yellow and green as we followed the Clearwater River out of the mountains.  This was the same route that Lewis and Clark took while crossing these same mountains exploring in the early 1800's.  We followed in their footsteps, albeit much quicker in the car.  We passed a beautiful beaver pond and along the road periodically there were suspensions bridges where trail heads crossed the river.  The bridges were wide and sturdy as they were built to be able to handle horses as well as people.

Beaver pond along Route 12

Suspension bridge along Route 12

Clearwater River

The road eventually left the scenic byway area and entered the Nez Perce Reservation.  It looked the same as the upper valley as followed the ever widening river toward the Pacific.  We started passing through small towns that were often run down.  Along the river we passed fly fishermen.  The bugs along the river were terrible and covered the windshield.  The fish in the river loved all the bugs as we stopped to take a break and you could see fish in the river coming to the surface to eat.  It was getting be dusk as drove along the river toward Lewiston, Idaho on the Washington/Idaho state line.  We had wanted to make it to Washington today but a search of hotels revealed there wasn't any once we entered Washington for quite a while so we had to stay the night in Lewiston.

Clearwater River at dusk

Entering Lewiston, the first thing we noticed was a large industrial plant on our left and a horrible smell.  The town is quite large and quite dilapidated.  We quickly found our motel and checked in.  When entering our room, we ran into a wall of smell like an old poop filled diaper that had been left too long in the kitchen trash can.  We turned the fan on in the room, hoping it would air the room out, and headed down the street to eat dinner.  Upon returning, we discovered that the offending room smelled equally offensive so I talked to the front desk clerk about changing rooms. He explained to us that more than likely it wasn't the room that smelled but the town.  Apparently, the industrial plant we passed was a paper mill and the reek from the plant wafts over the whole town.  This was not mentioned on the hotel website.  It would have been good to know.  To further add to the charm of the town, on the lower end of town there is also a fertilizer factory.  With no other towns to stay in for miles, we had come to beautiful Lewiston, Idaho scenically located between the paper mill and fertilizer plant.  I'm not sure why anyone would choose to live here.  We are definitely seeing a lot of aspects of America.  It's a shame that the beauty of this area is ruined by mans intervention as he rapes the land for what we call civilization.

While today's drive through the mountains was gorgeous it also tended to be a little boring after a while.  The winding road through the deep valley did not lend itself to any views.  It was enjoyable but not the same caliber that we had seen during the earlier parts of the trip.  I missed the splendor of the sweeping Wyoming and South Dakota plains and mountains.  Tomorrow it's on to western Washington and perhaps Mount St Helens as we make our way to the Pacific.  Soon it will be time to head north into Canada on that portion of the journey.  This certainly has been an adventure full of new sights and.........smells.