Murray's Visit

For a few months we’ve been planning a visit from my oldest son, Murray, who lives in Philadelphia.  Normally we live on the farm in the summer and our plan was to host Murray there where we have much better accommodations as well as places to roam.  And the temperature is about 10 degrees cooler.  Due to the unforeseen circumstances of water damage at the farm house it is unusable until the repairs are finished which undoubtedly will be after the summer has ended.  So we converted Kathy’s sewing room to a small bedroom and made do.  As most of our activities were planned elsewhere it was no problem.

Murray arrived Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning after attending the yoga session with us we went over to the old neighborhood in Lewiston where he was raised. We walked all around the neighborhood including the Lewis-Clark State College campus nearby where we often played.  A real bonus was meeting the owner of our old house, touring the yard and visiting with him.  With Bess’s insistence we went to the river for a swim in the afternoon to cool off a bit.  It was over 100 degrees every day in the valley.

We were up early Thursday morning and hiked up to the golf course for Bess’s retrieving exercise including a few retrieves in the course pond.  The rest of the day was spent sorting and loading camping gear with another visit to the river in the afternoon.  The previous weekend son Clint and I had ridden our motorcycles up to the Laird Park Campground about 75 miles to the north to scout it out.  It looked like a great place complete with a swimming hole on the Palouse River.  They even had a “Dog Swim” area.

Bright and early Friday morning we were on the road heading north.  Even with our relative early arrival there were only 2 or 3 out of 31 campsites open.  Even so, I was pleased with our choice.  It was shady and as private as you could get in that situation with water just across the road and the rest room nearby.  Nearby rest rooms can be a negative but they were kept very clean and only once can I recall getting a little odor.  We leisurely set up camp had a dip in the river and then lunch.

1st cache on trail hike

2nd cache on trail hike

After lunch we drove north a few miles to the Great White Pine Campground and took a hiking trail about a mile and three quarters east with many twists turn and ups and downs (mostly ups).  We found two geocaches, one that had not been found in a year and the other in two years.  After returning to camp and a refreshing swim we feasted on some backpacking dinners that I wanted to use as they were getting old.  I can report they keep well because they were delicious.  We were comfortably tucked in our sleeping bags by 9 o’clock.

Murray & Clint at camp

Shortly after breakfast Clint arrived with his ATV (I had trailered mine up).  We set off on a 4 wheeler trail to the Bald Mountain Lookout with Murray riding behind Clint who has a seat and storage on the back of his ATV and Bess in a dog carrier bolted to the back of mine.  It was a steep, twisting, rough trail with myriad Kelly humps and plenty of dust.  The back of Murray’s shirt was covered in dust as was Bess.  I let Bess out to run the last mile or so. Of course, there was a geocache at the lookout site.  The lookout is not active but it can be rented.  Not knowing it was occupied I climbed up to the lookout room to find a couple in bed.  Ooops.

Clint & Murray at Camp Grizzly

We took a road back so it was a much smoother and less dusty ride.  I gave Bess a good swim at camp to get her cleaned up.  Clint needed to get back to town so he didn’t stay for supper.  However, before he left we went a mile down the road and toured Boy Scout Camp Grizzly that both boys had attended while in the Scouts.  There is a trail that connects the Scout camp to the campground and I placed a geocache on it that afternoon.

Old Sampson Trail cache

After a good night’s rest and breakfast with a campfire we took a ride back up to the Great White Pine Campground to try another trail. This one was a connector trail to the “Old Sampson Trail”.  Sampson had a music store in Boise around 1913 to 1933.  During that time he and friends opened and maintained 6,600 miles of trails in Idaho.  One goes from the Canadian border to southern Idaho.  We were seeking a geocache about 1 ½ miles out with 500’ elevation gain.  We found the cache which had been found by a friend of mine in the fall of 2016 and only once in the 2 ½ years before that.

Boys at top of Lewiston Hill

Clint's back yard

After hiking back down we drove up Meadow Creek Road and found a few more caches that hadn’t been found in a long time.  There was only one that we didn’t find on this whole trip.  We drove back to camp, had a leisurely lunch, refreshing swim and broke camp.

After arriving in town we had a delicious grilled chicken and yummy side dishes at Clint’s topped off by Kathy’s rhubarb strawberry pie.  What a great weekend!  M/W