2019 Autumn Road Trip

We’ve just returned to Arizona, where we’ll spend much of the winter. We made the trip by car last week, something we do every few years as a change from flying. It’s a long trip, on this occasion, 2785 km (1,730 miles). In the past, we’ve done it in as few as two days, but this time we made it a road trip, a 5-day journey that enabled us to better enjoy the experience. The following map shows the route we chose, a very scenic drive.

We departed Canmore on November 2, on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Our plan for the day was an easy 3-1/2 hour trip to St. Eugene Mission, a golf resort near Cranbrook, B.C. It’s a longtime favourite that we’ve visited many times before and although golf is over for this year, it’s a pleasant stay and a good beginning to our odyssey.

It’s notable for being a former Indian residential school  converted to a Native-owned golf resort and casino. It’s located on the plain of the St. Mary’s River, between the Rockies and the Purcell Mountains.

Here’s a view of the nearby St. Mary’s River.

We crossed into the United States the next morning with the goal of visiting the Palouse area of southeast Washington state. It’s an agricultural region well known to photographers for its gentle rolling hills covered with grain fields. In the spring they are lush shades of green when the wheat and barley are young, and in the summer and autumn they are dry shades of brown.

I show this second view , taken from a higher elevation at Steptoe Butte. It better displays the patchwork appearance for which the area is renowned. I look forward to seeing it someday in spring or early summer in shades of green and yellow.

I was able to get some additional pictures, this next one featuring the Palouse River, flowing through the Village of Palouse. The colours are those of autumn, the river is frozen.

We enjoyed autumn for the third time. We experienced it firstly in Alberta (late September), followed by a late October trip to Ontario and Quebec and finally in this area of southeast Washington.

We left Pullman, WA the following morning for our day long traverse of Idaho. Our route took us through some very rugged and scenic terrain. It was slow going but well worth it. Our first memorable experience was our descent of White Bird Grade, a historic mountain highway along a section of U.S. Route 95 near White Bird, Idaho. This photograph shows the terrain as we saw it looking back.

We made a brief stop along the Payette River for me to capture this one of many beautiful scenes in this area, just north of Boise.

We reached our day’s destination of Twin Falls, ID following our longest day on the road. Before departing the next morning, I took some pictures of the city’s namesake waterfall and the Snake River Canyon.

The rugged beauty of the Snake River Canyon was brought to national attention in 1974, when the famous American daredevil, Evel Knievel attempted to leap the canyon on a steam-powered rocket. His parachute deployed prematurely, lowering him onto the rocks below. He survived with only a broken nose.

Soon after leaving Twin Falls, we entered Nevada at the small town of Jackpot, a befitting name for one’s entry to a state renowned for gambling. We traversed the Great Basin, an enormous expanse of desert covering much of the state, before reaching that day’s destination of St. George, Utah.

The scenery was no jackpot, but we certainly struck a highway bonanza. Route 93 conveyed us across the vast plain of the Great Basin with rarely a bend in the road and very few towns to impede our progress. I took very few pictures but I include the following shot as an illustration of the barren desert which is eastern Nevada.

Our final day proved to be a dash for home. We took a very scenic route through Arizona, but having seen it often before and impatient to reach our goal, I took no more pictures. Sorry about that.