Matthew Singer

Month: August 2010

  • Hiking Deary



    View from Potato Hill, originally uploaded by Matthew Singer.

    I’ve now been in Idaho for almost three weeks and I’m starting to get settled into my new home. Later I will post about the property and the abundant wildlife that make our place so special.

    But today, I write about a local hiking opportunity just over a mile down the road in the town of Deary. I have a theory that all cities and towns have an overlook, a spot from which you can stand and look down upon the population center. Sometimes these overlooks are only a few feet above the town itself. Sometimes they are man-made structures. But in mountainous and hilly regions, the overlook is most certainly a natural feature seen from the town itself. Of course there are many exceptions to this rule, but I find in most of the places I’ve been that the rule stands strong. In some cases, you can simply drive up to the overlook. In others, you can hike. And in rare circumstances, you have to bushwhack or even tresspass on private property to get there.

    Deary is no exception to the rule. Just behind the town to the north stands a hill a thousand feet above with a break in the trees and some cliffs on the summit. When I first drove through Deary in February, I wondered if the land was public property and if there was a way to the top. I now revel in the fact that the answer to both questions is “yes.”

    The trail up Potato Hill is designated a restricted use road available for all modes of transportation except automobile. So I was expecting to pass a few people on ATV’s or even horseback, but during my hike today, I passed only one person, and he was hiking with his dog just like I was.

    It’s two miles and about 1200 vertical feet from the town center in Deary. About half way up, the road ends at a communication tower and the trail becomes, well, more trail-like. In fact, there was hardly any signs of recent ATV use, so I suppose most people hike to the summit if many people go up there at all. The trail winds through an mix of open forest and grassy meadow and has a great prospect for wildlife sightings. As you increase in elevation, the slope becomes steeper and the forest becomes denser, when suddenly the forest breaks altogether and a series of cliffs open up a view over the Palouse. The hike is pretty mellow until the last jaunt to the summit where the trail turns straight up and becomes populated with loose rock.

    Nevertheless, the view from the summit is exquisite. The town of Deary, population 500-something, lies just below to the South. Beyond is the mix of forest and field of the eastern Palouse. To the West, you gaze upon Moscow Mountain and watch as the Palouse suddenly ends with a series of canyons off in the distance. Below, but out of sight, is the Clearwater River and the city of Lewiston. To the east, mountains rise and get bigger with each layer.

    This is a short hike, easily achieved in less than half a day, but nice to have so close to home. And yes, there are bigger mountains with taller views, those will be explored in due time. But this looks to be my go-to hike when I’m too busy to go farther afield.

  • The Road Trip

    Well, we are finally off and on our way to a new life in the middle of nowhere, Idaho. Of course, this trip is not without its share of stories.

    To begin with, we were supposed to leave Maryland as soon as Erin was done with camp. I gave her until 2:00 and we were pretty much packed and ready to go by 3:00. We locked the cats in the bedroom so we wouldn’t have to go looking for them, but they knew something was up and were trying their best to escape. Pumpkin got out several times, but we always managed to catch him and bring him back. But when Erin went up to the bedroom to pack the final items, Pumpkin escaped, ran downstairs and then back up. And then he disappeared. We searched all the rooms on the third floor and found no sign of him. There was a possible sighting of him running outside, so maybe he ran back down without notice. Erin wouldn’t leave without Pumpkin, so we were stuck at the farm waiting for him to show up. We were prepared to spend the night, hoping he would come back in for his can of wet food.

    So we waited, and waited, and searched all over the farm with no sign of the little furball. It was near 8:00 when Erin was in the bathroom on our floor and heard a squeaking in the wall. Sure enough, Pumpkin had run upstairs and vanished, just as I originally suspected. He had run into the bathroom closet, which has a huge gaping hole in the wall, and managed to hide within the walls of the house for the entire afternoon. So, with time to spare, we decided to load all the animals into the car and get a head start on our journey. We made it to Mars, PA, just north of Pittsburgh.

    We had a long and fairly uneventful drive on Saturday involving five states. We drove all the way from Mars, PA to Waterloo, IA, pulling in after midnight because the Motel 6 in Dubuque was completely full.

    Yesterday, we drove a record 800 miles from Waterloo, IA to Gillette, WY driving through Minnesota and the entire length of South Dakota. To break up the drive, we took a detour off the interstate to drive through the Badlands National Park. Somehow, the vast and endless prairie is abruptly broken with a series of desert-like sandy cliffs that are eroded into canyons and neat formations and have earned the reputation of the Badlands. We stopped at some overlooks, made it to the visitor center before it closed, and continued through the park. We made it a little ways down the road and stopped to walk the fossil trail. We have to leave the car running so that the animals don’t get too hot, but we’re never far from the car anyway. We get back and the doors are locked. The dogs must have knocked the button and subsequently stranded us outside the car. In our infinite wisdom, our cell phones and spare keys were inside the car. Great!

    Another visitor let us borrow his phone to call AAA. Now the Badlands aren’t really near anything. There are a few small (and I mean small) towns at the entrances, but the nearest major population center is Rapid City, about an hour away. But within a half an hour, AAA had someone out to get the doors open. Meanwhile, we had missed sunset and drove the rest of the park in the dark.

    We were tired and ready to quit for the night, and Rapid City was a good place to stop. But it turns out, there is a massive biker convention going on this week and all hotels were booked. The next Motel 6 was 2 hours farther in Gillette, WY. I would have camped, but Erin wanted to be able to let the cats out to roam around freely, so Gillette it was. Here we are in Wyoming getting ready to head for our next destination, Missoula, MT. Since we have a shorter drive, we should be able to get in at a reasonable hour and maybe even stop to see things along the way.


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