Hello Everybody, 8 Sept 2007 from Portland OR I mentioned in my last email that a ranger had told me a bad fire had forced evacuation in an area containing my friend's cabin - - this turned out to be an incorrect rumor, much to my relief. In 2001, when my truck and camper were just a few days old, my dad and I took our first off-road trip, from west to east across the 'famous' Lolo Trail (aka Lolo Motorway), a 100-mile dirt road which approximates the ancient Indian trail route taken by Lewis and Clark across the Bitterroot Mountains in September of 1805 & 1806. On their westward journey they nearly perished from snowy cold and starvation, a real epic of survival. Rather than retrace my 2001 route, I decided to cross Idaho north of the Lolo Trail, 150-200 miles on dirt roads of the Clearwater and St. Joe National Forests. I would guess I saw around 10 other travelers in that distance, often going 2-3 days entirely alone. Although Montana and Oregon, and Idaho farther south, were suffering an unusually early and severe fire season, the more northern parts of Idaho had only smoke haze and no big nearby fires. One goal along the way was to re-visit a lovely camping spot in Red Cedars which my dad and I stayed in 2002, along the North Fork of the Clearwater River, and it was just as pretty as I had remembered it. I had to take a detour out to civilization at Superior MT for fuel and food, and on the way back into the forest I had a nice (?) hike bushwhacking my way around Missoula Lake (many miles from the city of Missoula), for some nice flower pictures and a little Spotted Sandpiper which spent 15 minutes walking around on a rock only 10 feet away from me, peeping all the while. Visits to fire lookout towers are usually scenic and interesting: when I visited the volunteer 'Dawn' at the Middle Sister Lookout, I asked her if she knew my lookout friend Rod Bacon whom I met last year on the Oregon side - - she chuckled and showed me plaques on the wall showing that Rod had spent 7 seasons at Middle Sister. Later, I was to renew his acquaintance in Oregon. I found a nice place to camp by a little beaver pond, where the road was blocked for further travel by large fallen trees. The first thing I saw was a Kingfisher whizzing around over the pond and diving for fish, and I resolved to get a good picture of it - - and I finally did. This is a tough time of the year for bird identification, with grown juveniles in plumages often not resembling their parents. As I approached the Snake River country in western Idaho, the land changed dramatically from thick moist forests to much dryer nearly bare hills, with wide open views and a different kind of beauty. I needed to go a bit north to the little town of Grangeville for food and fuel, and I couldn't resist taking the old road which switchbacks spectacularly up White Bird Hill, rather than taking the new high- speed highway which is itself a fairly spectacular road. I wanted to explore the Idaho side of Hells Canyon (the Snake River, and border with Oregon) farther north of where I did last year: when I called the Ranger Station to check on the fire situation, they said the road into that area had just been opened hours before, having been closed for several weeks because of large fires. I camped at the summit of Pittsburg Pass, before the precipitous drop down to the river at Pittsburg Landing, a focal point for boaters and rafters. While hiking in the woods up from the pass, I was amazed to find 3 snags still smouldering and smoking; the next morning I hiked back with a shovel to smother them, but met 3 firefighters on the way who said there was no need, as there was nothing left to burn in the area. Soon after descending the grade down, a 16% slope with very tight hairpin switchbacks, I had a bit of drama when a fitting on the power steering pump failed and sprayed all the fluid out - - no power steering and no power brakes. Very lucky it did not happen in the middle of a switchback coming down. My Iridium satellite phone, which I carry only for emergencies, worked fine, and Campers World had a tow truck there in a couple of hours (no cost to me). The towtruck worked hard getting us back up the hill, in gear #2 out of 6, with the temperature gage climbing, but we made it OK. Campers World had told me they would take me to the nearest Ford dealer, in Enterprise OR, about 50 miles away by air but 140 miles by road - - their computer mapping program did not seem to realize that Hells Canyon was in the way. Apparently they wised up after talking to me, because they had told the towtruck driver to take me to the Ford dealer in Lewiston ID, 'only' 70 miles. I arrived there at 5 pm Thursday, to find that they were booked up and did not expect to get to me until Tuesday or Wednesday - - I camped in their big lot, listening most of the night to the tire screeches and exhaust roarings from a huge hot-rod show across the street. At 8 the next morning, they said a mechanic who had been out sick was unexpectedly coming in, and they had me out by noon. I had heard earlier from Rod Bacon that he had been evacuated from Hat Point LO because of an approaching fire; I called the Ranger Station and they told me he was now at Red Hill LO. Unfortunately, the person I talked to did not know that he had just been sent back to Hat Point. I discovered this after waiting a couple of days, fortunately very pleasantly, near the unoccupied Red Hill LO. I was happy to make the spectacular drive up to Hat Point, where EV and I had a great time looking at scenery and birds last year. I had a fine time visiting with Rod for the evening and next morning, and it was interesting to see all the trees and picnic tables around the LO all burned up - - a protection team had managed prevent serious damage to the tower and cabin, but just barely. It was time to move on to Portland, where EV took me to 4 local birding places with good photo opportunities, and even one new bird for my list. Here I've been doing internet and email things, and working on getting a laptop (which EV inherited from her mother) set up for the internet. Here are the same old instructions for the slideshows, but with the recently changed server address (firestardesign.com is changed to gj.net): http://www.gj.net/johna (Note that this is still 'johna' in spite of my email address change to be just 'john') The new slideshow is 07 08 August ID OR Each browser is a little different, but generally you can either choose OPEN to view the show once, or choose SAVE TO DISK and then OPEN if you want to have it your hard drive for future re-viewing. I have used my updated PC-cillin to be sure the .exe file is virus free, so you can safely ignore Windows's warning about 'dangerous <.exe> files'. Right-Arrow or Right-Click will advance to the next picture. Left-Arrow or Left-Click will return to the previous picture. Esc will end the show at any time; use Esc if the show ever seems stuck. If you don't have a high-speed Internet connection it's not realistic to download these large files on a phone line please let me know, as it is very easy for me to send them to you on a CD. And if you would like any of the individual images, just let me know. I have limited space on the server, so must sometimes remove older slideshows to put up new ones; let me know if you want me to send you a CD of any of the 'back issues', or of all of them from 2004-2007 along with their accompanying emails, on CDs. And if you don't want to get any more emails like this one in the future, just let me know. If you have friends who might be interested, I'll be happy to add them to my email list and they can download the slideshows. Regards, John Armitage