Thompson Falls Annual Memorial Ride

I belong to a motorcycle riders group called Mac’s Beemers Bunch. It’s composed of mostly older riders that meet the first Saturday morning of the month at Mac’s Cycle in Clarkston, WA. I joined the group about ten years ago I think. Before I joined, the group began doing an annual fall 3 day ride to the area around Thompson Falls, MT. At that time it was called the “Charlie Curry Memorial Ride” after a popular departed member who initiated that ride. Charlie was before my time, but since I joined several members have passed away (none in motorcycle crashes so far) so I’ll just call it what you see as this blog title.

Last year was my first time on the ride because it always interfered with bird hunting. There were about 8 or 9 riders and I really enjoyed it in spite of encountering some cold riding conditions. This year's ride was moved from October to September which suited me much better, weather-wise and hunting-wise. Unfortunately my frequent riding partner, Sam, couldn’t make it this year due to conflicts, but happily my son Clint could.

The Snake Pit

We met at Mac’s Wednesday, the 28^th at 9:30 on a beautiful autumn day. There were nine of us and eight bikes (Joe had his wife Leslie with him). I was the oldest and Clint was the youngest with the rest in between. We rode through Lewiston on Hwy 12 before turning north, going through Kendrick, Deary, Bovill and St. Maries. Shortly after leaving St. Maries, we hit road construction with several long waits and a detour. The detour was rough with lots of big trucks on it. I’m sure we lost at least an hour. I should have checked the Idaho 511 road reports. Checking after the fact I found that was the only road construction in north Idaho. When we reached Interstate 90 a few turned east on it and the rest of us took the less traveled old highway paralleling the Interstate on the north side. We met at our lunch destination, the Snake Pit, advertised as the oldest restaurant in Idaho. It’s located in Enidville just outside of Kingston. They have fantastic food. I had a pulled pork barbeque sandwich and Clint had a reuben. Because of the delay it was after 2:00 before we ate. Clint and I were so full we skipped dinner.

Old Murray Post Office

Downtown Murray

From the Snake Pit we took the Couer d’Alene River Rd north and east eventually turning due east on Prichard Creek Rd to the semi ghost town of Murray. We stopped there and took some pictures. We continued east over the Thompson Pass, across the continental divide and onto Hwy 471 in Montana. Hwy 471 eventually merges into Hwy 200 a short distance from our day’s destination at the Rimrock Lodge nestled alongside the Clark Fork River a few miles west of Thompson Falls.

After checking in, Clint accompanied me through Thompson Falls after some geocaches. We found one and didn’t find another on the east side of Thompson Falls. The one we found was in a park south of the highway and the one we didn’t find was nearby. From there we went back to town and made our way uphill to the north. We got into the same area where I had been the year before. The roads were no longer paved and we were in a large wooded area. We parked on the east side and hiked a ways on a trail out in the woods to find the cache. It was dark by the time we got back to the Lodge. I slept reasonably well that night in spite of Clint’s occasional snoring. (To be continued) M/W