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I had the pleasure of spending the day with Danial Jordan and his son Josh. Dan is an author of several books and accomplished photographer. We threw our gear into Gritz (my car) and headed for the hills. 7 hours later we emerged with low batteries and some great memories. I’ve put several shots into my photo album but this one is one of my favorites.

At one point of our drive we were heading up a very rough and dangerous mountain road deep into a Nation Forest. After about the first 3 miles the road was no longer even plowed. It was very difficult to control the car as it bucked against the walls of the icy-ruts in the snow made by other brave adventurers (probably loggers in huge trucks with chains on their tires) who had gone before us. There was only one car lane to dive on. Turning around wasn’t an option because we probably would have gotten stuck even with 4-wheel drive. We kept climbing in hopes of someplace where we could turn the car around and head back to safety. The snow dragged and pushed up against the bottom of the car. Finally, we found a turn off that had enough tracks packing down the snow for us to make a 3 point turn. Now that we were heading away from danger I could look around for some photo-ops. When we found one we just stopped the car and got out. There was no place to park and certainly nobody but loggers would have the equipment or stupidity to traverse this road.

Sure enough, after about 15 minutes Dan calls me over to move the car because another car had come “down” from the mountain and wanted to pass. I was amazed to find that it was a nicely dressed woman standing here in the middle of nowhere chatting with Dan. She was heading to work in Sandpoint. She lives further “up” the hill in a log cabin and this was just a commute for her and her Jeep.

This was going to be a story about manly-men risking our lives by charging up a mountain pass for the love danger. She put an end to that really quick. She did give us a handy pointer though. When driving up the hill, you have to floor it and hope for the best in order to avoid getting stuck. Gee… Thanks.

Rather than bore you with pictures that really don’t have any stories in them other than the fact that they are nice to look at, I’ve added a photo album to our site. We’ll see how that progresses. Here’s the link which will also be listed in our link list at the right: Wanderings

I was a bit bored yesterday and decided to go on a driving excursion. About 20 minutes from here I caught a glimpse of an eagle and then a moose. Mind you these images were taken from the highway. Please excuse the lower quality. Now that I know what to expect (yeah right) I’ll be a little more prepared to drive off the road into the snowbank to get better shots.

And for my final shot of the day, I caught this horse in a meadow. At these higher elevations, clouds and fog are kind of a new phenomenon to me compared to back home. This cloud of fog was simply rising off the field in the back ground. A very pretty sight.

(Click the image for full size)