Saturday morning, we set out on the road to Idaho.
Ranches are scattered in the valleys.
It starts to snow. I pull into a gas station to test my tires.
They probably think a teenager in mom's mini van is goofing around trying to do donuts. I call it performance trials.
20k a piece toys.
Not the same sleds I remenber from the 70's!
And 70 must've been what these guys were doing when they passed me as I was going 60 mph.
Brazen little turds too. They don't have the right of way when crossing a highway, but they assume it!
Like playing Whack A Mole, they pop out from in between the snowbanks. Now you understand why I was testing my braking capabilities at the gas station.
By the way, here's your sign.
Here's another sign, courtesy of the national weather service. Winter storm warning. I should hurry and get down from the mountains, but there's an itinerary to follow!
Planned stop at Harriman State Park, Idaho.
A total of 7 miles of dog friendly ski trails. We do them all!
... are worth it.
About a mile up the trail, I see no other tracks, so I let the hounds loose and quickly miss the horsepower that was keeping me from working too hard.
Winter wonderland.
Pete is wondering: "where the @&#! sled you were talking about?". No taxi service out here, buddy.
Snow, one of my favorite things.
Winter, my favorite season.
Nordic skiing, my absolute favorite sport.
And I live in Alabama, absolutely worst cosmic joke. Dear God, I'm laughing so hard, I'm gonna pee myself.
Garrett grasps the ridiculousness of it all and buries his head in the snow. Atta boy.
Correction: atta boys! Another qualification in our cross country odyssey, making this the 46th state Cole and I have run (skied) in. 2 more to go to clinch all 48 contiguous states.
Victory can be made sweet with a dab of adversity. For the last mile, I hooked the dogs back up, just in time to be greeted with a neurotic German shorthaired pointer running head long into us. No owners in sight, only a maniac barreling towards us with the family jewels bouncing between his legs. This could be trouble. In 0.04 second it was. The idiot runs straight into the middle of the scrum, growling. He bits Cole, screws all the lines up hog tying Pete on the ground, knocking me down in a wrecked ski pile, breaking one of my boots and perhaps a toe. Garrett defends Cole until I manage to get up and toss the 70 lb aggressor into the 3' deep snow. I encourage it to go back from whence it has come with the tip of my ski pole. We left blood on the snow, like Cole needs any help getting injured.
The dogs owners were more than half a mile up the trail when I found them. Total lack of responsibility to have an untrained, aggressive, unneutered dog, that is let loose to top it off... You bet they understood my English very well.
It's bad canine citizenship that makes it logical to ban dogs from so many places. Marley and Me was not, to me, a comedy about a mischievous dog. Marley was the poster child for bad dogs and terrible owners everywhere. I'll get off my soap box. It hurts to stand on my toe anyway.
Something to put a hitch in my giddy up. Silver lining: the leg that got twisted up is the one with the 6 million dollar knee... It seems fine.
One way to check: take a short hike on the Oregon Trail.
Shields holding at maximum capacity, but warp engines down to 50%. Damn it, Scotty, get us back online on the double.
