TRIP 06 DAY 10, Wednesday, May 27, 2009 – End of 2009 Walk
We failed to make our 7:30 a.m. departure target. Joanna loaded us up once again with fried eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast in a grand slam celebration of our last walking day. We left a little after 8 a.m. for the long drive out to the intersection of Wolfe Road (“1300”) and Harrison Road, which we found on the first try. As we approached the starting point, we saw an antelope eyeing us nearby in a field of sweet clover before it bounded off.
I walked first. Harrison Road continued in a straight, due-east line, dividing the alfalfa field just mentioned from a harrowed field with new shoots poking up from the brown furrows. Soldier Mountain towered above it all to the north. I walked three miles in the first segment, measured by three section road intersections. In the second segment, Harrison Road reached Highway 20 at the 3.5 mile point, and we were back on pavement after the long break on dirt roads. I crossed a bridge that apparently covered a colony of swallows, because as I walked over it, the birds flew around and around me, squeaking loudly, moving away and back in again close as a single entity, a whirlwind of wings and tail feathers. I was not being attacked, so it was actually quite pleasant. This had happened before with other bridges, and it happened once again with another bridge further down the highway.
A couple of ponds beside the highway reflected the deep azure sky and Soldier Mountain, providing pleasing discontinuity in the geometry of cultivation. A couple of grain towers did the same, silhouetted against the northern flank of Soldier Mountain.
Even on the highway, distance continued in easy measure with dirt farm roads consistently at one-mile intervals. I saw another antelope enjoying another alfalfa treat, only more distantly. When it decided to relocate, it moved fast and far before stopping again in another field.
I finished the last segment at Milepost 149, then drove another 3 miles into the town of Fairfield at the junction with the highway leading up to Soldier Mountain Ski Resort. I found a grocery store, two restaurants, and a motel where we may possibly stay at the beginning of our next walk. I drove back to the end point and waited for Joe to finish.
Walk rating: 7.0
Money found: Day: $.02 Trip: $1.57 Project: $16.00
Distance: Day: 8.9 miles Trip: 102.2 miles Project: 597.2 miles
Starting point: 43 20.567N 115 01.677W (elevation 5049 feet)
Ending point: 43 20.527N 114 51.289W (elevation 5083 feet)
Significance: Completed over 100 miles for the trip (which was our goal). End of Trip 06.
We drove back into Fairfield and ate at the Wrangler Drive-In, a place that reminded us very much of the café in Juntura a year earlier, a throwback to the 1950s complete with a 70-year-old farmer in a straw cowboy hat flirting with the 19-year-old blonde girl working the counter.
We drove back to Mountain Home (57 miles) and cleaned up, including wiping a lot of dust off the door wells and other hidden parts of the rental car….I don’t think National Car Rental really wants customers to drive all the places we did, although the roads were all in very good shape and no problem at all other than the dust.
Joanna fixed fried fish and jo-jos for dinner. And the conversations continued for one last evening. It really had been a very long stay. The Kellums deserve special thanks for making this seem totally in line with their normal existence. Our extended stay was unforgivable, if you look at it objectively. It certainly made the rest of this adventure much, much easier for us.
NEXT YEAR: Right now the tentative plan is to walk in late August rather than in May in 2010. We hope to get in a full 2 weeks, at least 125 miles, which would put us southeast of Arco, Idaho, on Highway 20 after having traversed the Craters of the Moon National Monument. This will be a test for good photography. How many pictures can I make from black lava? Then one more year should take us into Wyoming to the Jackson area in Grand Tetons National Park (in 2011).
