Back roads of Idaho

We travelled through the Boise National Forest in southern Idaho to Stanley, where at the gas station I saw a small brochure on the Yankee Fork gold dredge in a nearby tributary of the Salmon river. We turned off the main highway up a gravel road into the Challis State Forest and were soon in a small valley filled with tailings. Then in front of us I saw a genuine huge gold dredge looking just like the photos I'd seen of the last dredge to operate in Alexandra, long since dismantled.

The dredge was built in 1940 with profits earned by its owner in the construction of the Hoover dam, and it ceased operating in 1953 and has been sitting in its final floating place since then. It is now owned by the US Forest Service as it sits on their land, and is maintained by a team of retired people with either an interest or connection with the dredge and who run tours during the summer months.

It was fantastic to see a line of dredge buckets attched to a dredge boom rather than filled with flowers in Alexandra gardens. The dredge is 112 feet long, 54 feet wide, 65 feet high weighing 988 tons, covered in corregated iron and powered by electricity generated by 2 big diesel engines, just as the Alexandra dredge was. The machinery driving the bucket boom and the rotary screen was huge. The dredge was operated 24 hours a day by 3 men per shift. The gold was extracted once a week using mercury and the ingots were sent by ordinary post to the owner out east. I don't know how much gold was won from the claim or why the dredge ceased operating. The guides said there was a design fault in the driving gear for the bucket chain with the driving cog only on one side of the boom and not on both sides which would have evenly spread the load. So there was lot of regular maintainence needed.

We camped in the area near a ghost town in a clearing by the river sharing the site with a hobo called Larry, his American pitbull "Mama" and her 8 puppies. Lotte & Otie played with the puppies while I kept a wary eye on Mama looking for any sign that the true character of her breed might come out.

Larry was great, a 74 year old retired cowboy & constuction labourer drifting through the western states doing seasonal work, picking wild huckleberries, collecting semi-precious stones & harvesting sage to supplement his pension and then wintering over in his wild cabin in Arizona with no electricity or running water.

Larry knew all the free camping spots in these parts and gave us directions to some. He liked our boxed wine.

The next day we headed off up the single lane gravel road to Challis & just around the corner came across a moose grazing in a pond by the road. We had our own private wildlife show because there was no other traffic. Driving through remote wooded valleys and over passes made one realise how big the west is.

We eventually got back on the main road and drove south to Arco which boasts the site of the worlds first atomic reactor. While parked for a loo stop, a bolt of lightning hit the ground about 100 meters away with a simultaneous thunder clap which shook the van giving us all a fright.

We overnighted at the nearby Mountains of the Moon National Park with its eerie lava landscape where we explored lava cones, beds and caves.

The North America continent is moving westward and this area was formed by the geological hotspot which currently lies beneath Yellowstone. The next day we drove back to Jackson Hole to enjoy comfortable beds at Mick & Pam Hopkinsons, and we got in some mountain biking and kayaking on the Snake river.