Her own private Idaho

The easiest way to visit my sister, traveling from Seattle, is to fly into Sun Valley airport in Hailey, Idaho.  Alaska Airlines provides the only direct flight from Seattle, once a day in each direction.  And in the off-season for either skiing or summering, like October, only three days a week.

Early last week, therefore, I found myself in that small airport, renting a car.  The odyssey had just begun.

There are basically three routes from Hailey to Challis, near my sister's home.  The fastest, according to Google Maps, begins with the "highway" heading east from Sun Valley (Trail Creek Road).  I've been on that road before, so I went into the drive with my eyes open.

Actually, it wasn't bad.  The day was sunny and warm and dry.  The road begins as a normal, paved two-lane highway.  It soon becomes gravel, although well-graded, as it winds steeply over the Pioneer range.  Virtually no traffic until you reach the intersection with north-south U.S. 93 at Chilly.  No cell coverage.  I've been warned, since my return, that rental companies generally prohibit use of passenger cars on unpaved roads, but how was I to know?

It's a fun drive, although if the traffic were heavy it would be a dusty nightmare.  And it's closed in the winter.  You don't drive fast.  Eventually, the road flattens out and becomes paved again, and you reach U.S. 93 about an hour after leaving Sun Valley (and an hour and a quarter after leaving the airport).  It's another hour north on U.S. 93, an easy and pleasant drive (in summer!), with little competing traffic, until you reach the "outskirts" of Challis. 

Challis, with a population of about one thousand, is the only community of any size you encounter after leaving Sun Valley, and the last community you would find if you continued north on U.S. 93 until you reached Salmon (pop. 3,100), some 59 miles farther north.  Challis is a small town with basic necessities, but it isn't your final destination.

But we're getting there.  Leaving Challis, I drive another 20 minutes on a winding road heading west into Challis National Forest.  Just before reaching federal land -- on the federal land border, in fact -- I reach my sister's house, sited on some fifty acres.  It took a while to get there, but once there I settled into a relaxing week, finding myself about as isolated from civilization as you can get in today's America (although wi-fi reception prevents total unawareness of the "excitements" of the outside world).

Your correspondent,
pretending he knows what he's doing.

It was a great week.  The house is far larger and more comfortable than you might expect for back country, and the land on which it sits is a combination of rolling hills, arid prairie, and woodlands irrigated by two creeks running across the property.   For a person like me, who likes to walk, there were plenty of walks, over various terrains.  There were two dogs, both easy to like even for a cat-person, and 25 or so pet rats pandered to by my youngest nephew.  There were horses, inquisitive and well-trained.

Also helping to prevent wilderness-madness, a couple my sister knows from Sonoma also have property about five miles down the road -- a couple who provide both good conversation and excellent food. 

So, no, I wasn't exactly roughing it.  My sister, by choice, loves isolation, but this isn't really "Little House on the Prairie."  If you don't mind driving twenty minutes into town every time you need something from the grocery -- and with modern traffic, drives of that length can happen even in Seattle, from my house to Safeway -- you can live a very pleasant life outside Challis.  And especially as a visitor with a ticket back to the big city.

But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.

But in the tradition of the American frontier -- only a few years after escaping the creeping urbanity of Ennis, Montana -- my sister already feels the world closing in on her.  We spent a day driving on gravel roads deep into the national forest, to Copper Basin.  She had her eye on a house, 2¼ hours on gravel roads from Sun Valley.  The only neighbor within miles was a tiny forest ranger station.  The only concession to the modern world was a rough and overgrown air strip. 

"Ah, yes!  This is more like it!"   She's ready to light out for the territory.