This past weekend, I competed in the Puck-a-Palousa hockey tournament down in Lewsiton, ID. The tournament was actually supposed to be in Moscow, but the rink in Moscow melted with the high spring temperatures (the rink is not so great and desperately needs a new chiller). On the plus side of driving down to Lewiston, though, is the fact that Lewiston is about 2000 feet lower than here and is essentially a desert, so the trails down there have been completely dry pretty much all winter. If you look on the satellite view on the map in my previous post, look just south of Pullman/Moscow and you can see the rivers and the canyons. That is where Lewiston is.
For the hockey tournament, I was playing on a mixed "C" level division team. The reason I was playing with them is that most of the players on the team are going to be on the newly formed Washington State University Women's Hockey Team that I will be coaching. So, I played on this team as a player-coach and just had some fun. We ended up losing all three games, but by the end of the weekend, the team started playing together a lot better and it showed us a lot of the areas that we need to work on.
Each day after the hockey games on Saturday and Sunday, I drove a little bit down the road from the hockey rink and rode at a place called Hell's Gate State Park. It is called Hell's Gate because it is at the beginning of the Snake River Canyon section called Hell's Canyon. Farther down, the canyon is the deepest canyon in North America, reaching a depth of 7700 feet in some areas. The trails at Hell's Gate are very dry, with a lot of sage brush getting stuck in my cassette, but there are some really rocky and fun sections of trail. There is also one section that is similar in steepness and sketchiness to the Super Sketchy Section, only a lot longer. This section is called Devil's slide.
Here are some pictures from the top just before heading down Devil's Slide. The first picture is looking up the Snake to the South and the second picture is looking down the Snake to the Northwest.
Hell's Gate State Park has a lot of other fun activities that I am hoping to take advantage of later, such as the archery range. Thanks to Mr. B, I think I will be practicing my shooting with a bow soon so I can be ready to hunt this fall. Also, when I was leaving on Sunday, there were 12 horse trailers parked at the trail head. I am not sure how much fun that would be for all those people there, since there are only about 12 miles of trails in the park, but I guess it was a beautiful day.
When I got home from my ride on Sunday, my roommate asked me if I wanted to go for a hike with him. I was so tired from the weekend full of so many activities, but it was so nice outside that I couldn't say no. So we headed up to Kamiak Butte and looked for some deer sheds. He ended up finding two small ones, and I got skunked again. Either way, it was a gorgeous day and a perfect hike. It was made even better since we drove to the other side of the Butte that the parking lot for the county park is, so we hiked a bunch of the Butte that is much less populated and actually has quite a bit different terrain and vegetation. It was like being in a completely different area.
Well, that was my exciting weekend. I got some good sun and had lots of fun.
Oh! It took me quite a while to figure out how to comment... First I am jealous of all of the outdoor time and the views - I can only imagine what a feeling that would give a person. We finally had a nice day yesterday (well one where I wasn't stuck inside of a hospital)and I planted some flowers and walked around our new neighborhood. I love creating a new garden at the new house, and the previous owners did some nice landscaping, but I also am sad I do not get to enjoy the product of all of my hard work at the house in Jackson. I drove by the last time I was in town and could see all of the daffodils popping up and getting ready to bloom. Of course I did not forget the different environment that surrounded the house in Jackson - that I do not have to listen to yelling neighbors and too loud bass shaking my whole house or fireworks going off in the middle of the night every night - its much more peaceful here and so many trees. Sheldon was saying the other day he couldn't wait to put chairs out on the deck and look at the stars, what a romantic husband I have. Speaking of Sheldon, we were watching Michigan Out of Doors and they were showing dogs that are trained to hunt sheds - pretty cool. Glad to hear you are having fun - I like the opportunity to see some of your pictures and hear about your adventures, I'd love to visit sometime and have you show me some of those beautiful views. I love you and God bless you. I have considered starting a blog several times - but got stumped on a title :P (and when I went to post my comment, my title that made jokingly that I didn't know had become permanent is my title - creepy internet)
ReplyDeleteThere are quite a lot of nice vistas over here, but I am sure you have some great views, too. And I am sure everyone is jealous that you live so close to the year around Christmas store.... I can imagine the neighbors are probably incredibly better there than in East Jackson, if you have very close neighbors at all...
DeleteYeah, Sheldon told me about the shed hunting dogs. I need to get a dog so that I can train him to hunt sheds and retrieve some birds for me.
I'm glad you like the pictures and the stories, I'll keep them coming. Your comment title actually sounds like a good title for a blog to me, if you wanted to give it a try.