Nampa detour

September 11-13, 2019, Days 7-9

Rome, OR to Nampa, ID, ~0 miles, ~91.2 miles total

The last few days haven’t gone as planned but all sorts of good things have happened too.

Wednesday morning in Rome we realized we needed to head to town so Gabriel could see a medical care provider about the infection in his foot. Which meant we’d have to hitch 90-some miles to the Boise area. The Rome Station staff were SO HELPFUL! Shawna put in a good word with all her patrons and helped us get a ride from two wonderful ladies. (Thank you Shawna!!)

Val and Marge had come out to Rome for breakfast (the food is good). Marge was visiting from out of state and the two were taking day trip adventures from the Boise area. How fortunate that Wednesday was the day they went to Rome!

It was so much fun to talk with these women about their interesting lives exploring and living all around the West. Val had taught survival skills for her son’s scout troop in the Sierra’s. (Pro-tip learned: if you carry a piece of foil you can build a pot to heat water and cook worm/grub protein broth.) Both of them spoke with appreciation for the beautiful landscapes in view on our drive up Hwy 95. We even had peekaboo views of formations we had seen along our hiking route; but from a new perspective.

In no time we were in Idaho and they dropped us off at an urgent care clinic in Nampa (a suburb of Boise). Gabriel was seen by a physician, given prescriptions for antibiotics for the infection, and was advised to wait a few days before getting back to his “backpacking vacation”.

So we’ve been hanging around Nampa for the last few days. Appreciating the conveniences of proximity to medical care, pharmacies, stores with kale and kombucha, laundry, 4G, etc. Taking walks around town.

We even got to see my good friend Elizabeth from college! She lives in Boise these days and drove over to visit us while her kids were in school. It was great to have an impromptu get together.

In between activities, Gabriel is soaking his foot in a (AquaMira) sterilized garbage can with hot water. He reads. I do blog things and research questions from our hike. Both of us work on logistics.

For my birthday we rented a car and went out to the Bruneau sand dunes east of Boise. The area is home to the tallest sand dunes in North America and has an astronomy observatory. If we’d been there when it was cooler, we could have rented sleds/sand boards to ride the dunes. It was 89 degrees today when we got to the state park, a temp deemed too hot to sled. Oh well, next time. It was still pretty neat. We now have lots of ideas for fun explorations on future trips to the Boise area.

The highlight of day three in Nampa was Gabriel getting the go-ahead from his PCP back home and his physician here in town to go back to the trail tomorrow! Hooray!!!

We’ll make our way to Rome in the morning. Sometime tomorrow we hope to start the 6-day-ish*, 110-ish* mile leg to McDermitt, NV through some of the Owyhee’s finest canyon country.

Stay tuned in a week or so.

*Time and mileage are -ish sort of approximate things on a route like this one.