2025

Exploring the Panhandle of Idaho | Priest River and the Selkirk Mountains

After we left the St. Joe we continued north to the Priest River area in the northern reaches of Idaho’s panhandle. Huckleberries continued to be prolific, as did the mosquitoes, and we spent our first night in the area inside the camper listening to thunder and avoiding the pesky bloodsuckers. The next morning we picked a few cups of huckleberries before we departed camp. They made a great second round of sourdough pancakes, and went into some homemade huckleberry maple breakfast sausage once we arrived home. Yum!

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Exploring the Panhandle of Idaho | St. Joe River

This trip started with a whoosh. Well, actually it started with a long slow drive up a rocky road, leading to that whoosh. The whoosh was the air rushing out of our right rear tire at record speed after being punctured by a rock. There’s nothing quite like spending the day working your way into a remote site in the forest to spend a few days, only to come up a mile or so short of your goal, and then feeling the need to go get a tire fixed. We passed the three options of camps we intended to stay at. They looked very nice. Maybe next time.

We spent the remainder of the day, and most of the next one driving out for a tire repair and then back to the St. Joe. Along the way out we picked up another flat tire. I guess the rocks are sharp on the St. Joe. Or they had a message for us. I’m going with the first option.

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Dworshak Reservoir Boat, Camp and Fish

Up until this year we hadn’t had much luck at Dworshak Reservoir., which is a shame, because here is this huge reservoir that mostly has an undeveloped shoreline, nice boating amenities, but the fish we were catching were tiny. Like fall through the net tiny. That all changed this year. We started catching kokanee with a decent size to them, and figured out the technique to start catching decent numbers (hint: they are really shallow). By early June we were having 30 fish days going out for day trips. The water level topped off at full pool about then as well, which made the boat in mini camps (70 in total) easily accessible for some boat in camping. We packed up the boat and headed out for three days of boat in camping to chase some kokanee.

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