After finishing Washington and taking our celebratory trip to Vancouver Island, Dogzilla and I took a couple months away from riding. I had still been struggling with the loss of Captain Fantastic and couldn’t motivate myself to do much of anything. Besides Vancouver Island, Zilla and I had also taken a trip to California and Oregon to spread some of Captain’s ashes, but aside from that, we took most of the summer off. As fall began approaching, I was finally able to muster the mental strength to get back on the bike and start the journey across Idaho with Zilla.

We picked up exactly where we left off at the Washington/Idaho border and before we even started pedaling, I noticed there was a plum tree right next to the trail and that the plums were ripe and ready to be eaten! Though I hadn’t earned a treat yet, there was no way I was going to pass such a wonderful opportunity to sample the freshest plums you’ll ever find and oh man, I was not disappointed! I limited myself to just a couple plums as I didn’t want to overdo it. Besides, this was the only plum tree we’d seen on the trail so it wouldn’t be right of me to pick it clean and not leave some for the next animal or cyclist lucky enough to find it.

We then carried on, or more accurately started our ride for the day, continuing along the Great American Rail Trail and saying one final goodbye to the Palouse to Cascades Trail and Washington. We were eager to see what Idaho had in store for us and it didn’t take long before we saw a massive pile of bear poop in the middle of the trail! The pile was filled with berries and looked dry, so hopefully the artist wasn’t hanging around. But if he was, I knew a plum tree that he might be interested in!

A short distance down the trail, we found a pile of massive bones. They were way too large to be a deer and there weren’t any cow pastures in the area so my best guess is that it was a moose. We’d seen a moose just a couple miles down the trail on the Washington side of the border so we knew they were in the area and based on the proximity of the bones to the trail, I’m thinking this moose got poached by illegal hunters who were in a hurry cut the body up and just took the head. I really hate people sometimes.

My view of humanity wasn’t about to improve any time soon either….

As we rode along, we soon came upon the makings of a trashy man cave. First we found a disgusting mattress that not even the most desperate person in the world would ever sleep on. A short while later, we found a refrigerator that looked like it had seen its heyday back in the 1970’s. This was followed by a deeply stained love seat and TV that had been out here for so long that it had rusted. I wondered how many years this area had served as the dumping grounds for people that didn’t want to pay to have their furniture gotten rid of.

Then we came upon the find of the day, a dumped trailer! Apparently, somebody didn’t want their travel trailer/hunting trailer any longer, so they brought it out to the trail and pushed it over the hillside. You can’t tell from the photo but the roof was caved in in parts, the sides were smashed in, door open, and it looked like it might have partially broken off of the axle. This was easily the trashiest section of trail to date and it was not a very good introduction to Idaho or should I say, I-dump-ho.