Saturday 3rd
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We got to the Craters of the Moon Park after breakfast. To get there we had to drive through a genuine and very real sand storm. It was a beautiful blue day but the wind was up and the area was a bit like a desert. We were riding along and it was getting a bit hazy and I noticed the sand was starting to blow about a bit. Not long after that I couldn’t see 10 feet in front of me and sand was blowing through my helmet into my eyes. It didn’t last long but all I could imagine was tornadoes and that I was about to hit one and die. I didn’t of course. When we finally rode into the next town we were covered in sand but it did have a nice feeling to ride in, stop and get off the bikes dusting ourselves off. Reflections of the real wild west!
Dave decided to go hiking in the Craters of the Moon Park for the afternoon. Harry and I thought that hiking amongst sharp volcanic rock wasn’t what we wanted to be doing so we decided to meet up in Boise that night.
Harry and I drove to Sun Valley where all the superstars have mountain retreats. You could tell the village was rich when it has an airfield of private Lear jets. On the road we stopped to help a woman start her bike. It was a kick start and she just wasn’t getting it. We talked, or at least Harry was, and we ended up having lunch with her. It turned out to be a typical Hollywood story. She was just about to release an album, was going to be a big star soon and was actually going to visit Arnold Schwarzenegger that afternoon. Oh, and her song was all about child abuse cause all she wanted to do was help people. I don’t know, maybe I’m just a skeptic but I thought she was just a bit, well, Hollywoodish.
We rode through a couple hundred miles more of big mountains and huge pine forests to get to Boise. This is where we made the big mistake, or rather I should say we made the big mistake back when we left Dave. Boise, to our surprise, turned out to be a big city. We arranged with Dave to meet up at the Boise campsite. Not any particular one, just the one and only one it was bound to have cause all the other small towns we passed though had something. But Boise was a big city and we arrived at night time. Finding Dave was going to be hard.
We started touring the campsites of Boise but found that they didn’t take tents. Strictly RV camps only. It’s really fucking annoying to be told there’s a campsite, drive a long way there and then find out you can’t stay. We bumped into another biker, Dex from Canada, who started work there on Monday with the Idaho State Ballet Company. The three of us ended up hanging around the town centre, looking for Dave and drinking some beers. We were being entertained by some 20 odd locals who were posing a lot on their Jap bikes. Riding up and down on their bikes complete with the obligatory young blond on the back. We hadn’t seen so many non Harleys for so long it was a treat.
With no sign of Dave we left to look for some place to camp. We found a clearing in town and pitched the tents.
Sunday 4th
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We looked for Dave around the town centre again but there was no sign of him. Harry phoned him Mum to be told that Dave was not only not in Boise but that he also wasn’t in Idaho. He was in Oregon waiting for us. So we went and had a long breakfast with Dex, said our goodbyes and set off on our quest to find Dave.
As usual Dave landed on his feet with a free breakfast and some place to do an oil change. He apparently met some guy at some point who put him up for the night. He obviously had a better place to spend the night than we did.
We got into the middle of the Great Sandy Desert and found a track that led off into the middle of nowhere. We took it and we didn’t have to go very far before we couldn’t be seen from the road. You can really feel alone out there with nothing to be seen of human activity. You can see for miles, you’ll see nothing move and it’s so quite you can hear your heart pounding.
The sun was setting as we put up the tent but it went down slowly so we sat around watching the stars come out. We were so far out from anywhere that we could even see stars right on the horizon. We slept outside the tent, falling asleep slowly while watching falling stars and even the occasional satellite pass overhead. I woke up several hours later and realized I was alone. It was cold so I crawled into the tent.
Monday 5th
We had to travel almost a hundred miles to get breakfast but at least those miles were through some relay beautiful land. We got through the rest of the desert and got into hills with lakes around us. 
Breakfast was good, after a night in a desert and driving a hundred miles, it was really good. We met a couple at breakfast who were staying a few miles up the road in a motel that had hot springs and they invited us up. We couldn’t resist so we headed off with them. There was even a campsite next door so we stopped there, freshened up, and spent the afternoon in a hot springs swimming pool. Absolute heaven after camping for so long.
The town was a bit dead since it was the last day of the labour weekend and all the bars were closing early and everyone were heading off to a party. We did get free hot potatoes with chili in a bar so the night wasn’t a total loss.
Tuesday 6th
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I went into town in the morning to get a new chain. The bike shop didn’t have one so they sent me to a whole sale place where it cost me $18 instead of the expected $100. I was a bit suspicious but it looked OK. I had breakfast while he fitted it and then went back to the campsite. As I was leaving again the chain fell off. I was just moving off as it happened so nothing bad happened but I was left wondering what would have happened if it had fallen of while I was doing 70 on the way back to the campsite. I spent another hour at the bike shop while the guy looked into it. Conclusion, an act of God which didn’t make me feel any better.
We had to wait for Dave to get back from the hot springs by which time it was too late to set off. We went for a Chinese meal, which wasn’t all that great, when Harry decided he was going to camp in California that night, in the campsite just across the border. He left to go break camp and peeped his horn as he passed heading to California. A while later he came back, all excited, saying he was going to the coast tonight and would we go? To damn right we’re going. There was no way Harry was going to see the coast before we did. Dave and I went back to the campsite and packed up. We all set off at about 10 at night to ride hundreds of miles to see the Pacific Ocean.
The first stop was 10 miles down the road at the California. Yep, another photo stop. We took photos of Harry prying a reflector disk off the Welcome to California road sign. We headed south then west right through the night taking a couple of coffee stops and petrol stops along the way. With about a hundred miles to go we stopped at a layby to get some sleep. We just couldn’t keep going anymore and it was getting dangerous. We lay as flat as we could on our bikes. Harry was able to lie flat on his back but I ended up sitting in my seat face down on my tank.