Idaho to Washington

Too bad we couldn’t cross the border into Canada to have a short look around just to say that we had been there and get to mark a Canadian provence on our states visited map 😉  That whole pesky pass port andbureaucratic red tape involving Native American’s sovereignty thing I mentioned earlier.

Idaho and eastern Washington were not quite what I was expecting.  I knew Idaho had lots of forest next to Yellowstone obviously with the national forests there but I don’t know a whole lot about the rest of the state except the potato thing.

The northern stretch that we crossed was very thick and gigantically tall pine and fir trees with what looked like redwoods here and there thrown in, I now think those were Western Redcedars after looking at that site.  Idaho had lake after lake after lake, some of them quite big too with very large boats cruising down them.

Not what I was expecting at all, I’m not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t this.    Idaho is a lot like New Mexico in that everyone’s perception of it is exactly wrong and I’m guessing nobody cares to correct those perceptions so they also aren’t overrun with tourists seeking out the natural beauty and spoiling it 😉

Yogi is becoming one well traveled bear!

We met this guy at a very busy tiny gas station in centeral Washington State.  I’ve never seen one of the new Excelsior Hendersons in person let alone on the road in the middle of a long trip.  He was headed to the Grand Coulee Dam. I am totally blown away that he has one of these very rare and expensive bikes and actually using it like this instead of keeping it in a garage collection like most people who have them.

He mentioned the front fender came off another bike and he’d never painted it and they had also done some work to the engine.  Excelsior Henderson’s second wind produced a limited number of these Super X’s with a all new engine and drive train. They spent huge amounts of money up front in engineering costs to develop and make these and then promptly went under when they couldnt sell enough, the same thing that’s happened to Indian a few times.

Anyway, he says the engines are very solid mechanically and had quite a bit of new technology in them but the electronics weren’t so hot. The company wasnt back in business long enough to perfect things.  A few owners were able to get the computers reverse engineered and reprogram some new ECUs on their own since the company was gone and obviously couldn’t support them.  With the new brains behind the engine he says these bikes are outstanding and he takes this one everywhere.   Where theres a will theres a way!

The plains and dry desert of Washington was fairly boring until we dropped down about 1000 feet in just a few miles down to a river where the road was lined with fruit stands.  We stopped at one and loaded up with several pounds of fresh Rainier Cherries and plums!  I almost got sick eating a pound of cherries in one sitting for lunch, they were soooo good!

Wow! Boy will all the gardeners back home be jealous of these things!   Look at how big and full these planters are, I’ve never seen petunias look this good before.

This fruit stand had petunias and other flowers in every color imaginable! Very pretty.

Awesome truck too!

Along with the fruit they had jams and preserves of anything you could want.  We ended up getting some marion berry creamed honey to take back home.