| Description: | A fairly interesting loop through the area of heavy mining a hundred years ago northwest of Idaho City. I planned this ride for a tandem since it looked like the roads were more used and thus smoother. This turned out to be mostly the case, with only the road between Grimes Pass and Centerville being a bit more gravely and loose.
We got up early and drove through Idaho City to New Centerville. There we parked near the road intersection and headed west towards Placerville. The road was paved for the few miles to the Horseshoe Bend road turnoff. Placerville was not too far from there, we stopped there for a bit to check out some old reenactment fair, they had bunch of people with old dresses and old crafts. Then we continued north to Alder Creek Summit, the road was not too steep till the very last pitch, so, it was not too bad, and the air was still reasonably cool. Then followed a fairly steep descent towards South Fork Payette River, near Garden Valley. The area is quite scenic with steep forested hills and green meadows in the valleys. We stopped for a bit at the bridge over Payette River and then headed east on the south side of the river on a south side road. It was still nice and cool there and the road had minor ups and downs heading upriver which was nice. There was quite heavy camping activity in the area but the road was wet (looks like it was watered by a truck) so the passing cars and ATVs did not dust us. This idylic part came to an abrupt end as we started climbing out of the Payette river valley north towards Grimes Pass. It was a hot steep three mile 1500 ft. climb. Then followed a 10 mile slow descent back to Centerville - this was not all that great either as the road was loose and dusty and occasional truck or ATV were leaving thick dust cloud. The largest surprise came at the end of our ride, our Subaru, left lonely in the morning, was surrounded by scores of cars, truck, ATVs, motorcycles, etc. It turned out that there was a speedboat racing demonstration at the nearby pond. It was quite humorous to watch all the motorheads hanging out, zipping around in their ATVs, trucks, etc. Definitely an original ending to a ride. |
