Encampment Seven, Trails End Motel, Salmon Idaho

The best-laid plans of mice and men will sometimes go awry. 

(Robert Burns)

We left Diamond T early in the morning and headed off to our next Encampment - Yellowjacket Ranger Station in the vicinity of Salmon, Idaho. The morning road trip was gorgeous with more towering mountains, lush valleys and rushing rivers.


A road sign indicated "Big Horn Sheep Area"

and, sure enough, after a while Darlene spotted a trio of them including this spectacular ram.



The drive across the Continental Divide was spectacular and no photos can do justice to the expanse of land, the upsweep of the mountains and the depth of the valleys.

Stepping out of the car is at first disorienting because of the juxaposition of so many difference scales and distances of objects. One feels lost in the magnitude of it all.

We pulled into Salmon around 3:00 P.M. in good time,

filled up with gas and headed out of town for the 64 mile jaunt through the back-country to the Yellowjacket Cabin when suddenly the power steering went dead. Here the serpentine belt had slipped off. Gene was able to get the belt around the pulleys in the appropriate fashion but could not get it over the tensioner pulley to finish the job. Calls to numerous local auto repair shops proved fruitless. Turns out the local business establishments serve the travelling public five days a week then seriously head for the rivers and woods themselves on weekends. So, in desperation, we called back to E-town in an effort to contact either John Fackler or Dwayne Goretzke to see if they could at least tell us what to do. Eventually both got back to us and between the two coached Gene through the trick of loosening the tensioner pulley. Finally, at 7:00 p.m. the job was done and we headed out of town.

The road towards Yellowjacket was spectacular and very remote

After 24 miles we came to a road closed sign. We consulted the map and found an alternate route to the cabin which involved some backtracking.




But no sooner had we started down the new route when we crashed into an embedded rock in the road that was just high enough to hit the underpart of the car. With great apprehension about what we might find, Gene looked under the car and discovered oil dripping from the oil pan, but no other apparent damage. He was able to slow the leak with some adhesive cement but with a crippled vehicle, we had to abandon our efforts to reach Yellowjacket

and headed back up the mountain to Salmon for the first available motel which turned out to be appropriately named "Trail's End."

We decided to wait 'till morning, assess the situation and decide how to proceed. In the morning we went to the local United Methodist Church which was uplifting spiritually and our conversations there provided a wealth of information about local resources. Gene worked on further patching the leak and it appeared that it would hold, so we made reservations for motels for the next three nights and planned to head on our way in the morning. But, after we took an initial sightseeing trip of about 20 miles out and back we discovered that the oil leak, which had apparently been stopped, was at it again, so back into Salmon to the Good News Garage, recommended to us yesterday at church. How God works! The fine Christian gentleman took a look at it and agreed with us that the best plan would be to put on a new oil pan. He promptly ordered the part (these things are not available in town) and told us to come back to the garage at 8:00 next morning. So, we headed back to the motel, adjusting plans and catching up on our reading. 

PS The only human being we saw in the back country - a woodcutter - just before and right after we hit the rock - turned out to be the husband of the motel manager at the "Trail's End!"