Freedom Road Trip West 2016!

[Ryan Ruck]

This upcoming Saturday morning my youngest brother, Devin, and I will be departing Cincinnati and heading to the northern Panhandle area of Idaho for some sightseeing and the experience of making the trip. Unfortunately our middle brother, Danny, was unable to get off work.

This is going to be our route out there. We're looking to get out there as directly as possible so we can check into our lodging as early as possible Monday.

We didn't start out with much of an itinerary but we have developed a few points of interest each of us wants to visit throughout the trip.

On the drive out, my brother wanted to stop off at the Antique Archeology/American Pickers shop in Le Claire, IA and the world's largest truck stop in nearby Walcott since they are both on the route. Probably just going to sleep in the van half way through the trip somewhere in South Dakota.

We'll be getting into Sandpoint sometime Monday evening and staying in either the La Quinta, Quality Inn, Days Inn, or Ruby Ponderay. We haven't really decided yet.

Tuesday we'll checkout Sandpoint and the areas north like Bonner's Ferry. Places recommended to me were Sweet Lou's and Laughing Dog Brewery. Interestingly, we can get Laughing Dog here locally at Jungle Jim's. Can't remember off hand if I've tried anything from them. I need to pick a couple up before the trip out. I hope I can find some of their Devil Dog even though their site lists it as unavailable, I'd like to bring some back for Danny.

Wednesday we'll probably head down to Coeur d'Alene to see what's there. Didn't get any specific recommendations for around there but I'm sure we can find something to do.

Thursday we'll check out of our lodging and head south to check out Moscow briefly since that's really further south than I am interested. Rants And Raves Brewery and Hunga Dunga Brewing were recommended. From there it was suggested we take 95 down to Lewiston and then take US-12 through the Clearwater Valley back to 90 around Missoula.

On the way back the plan is to make a stop at Mt. Rushmore. We may end up bunking for the night around there and then heading out the next morning to finish the trip. We should get back home late Saturday possibly Sunday depending on how we're feeling.

Many pictures will be taken and posted!

Last night I had the opportunity to talk with an ARFCOMmer who, while he isn't a local yet, is intimate with the area and owns property there he will be moving to soon. Learned things that only people who know the area would know like how bad bugs can get (thankfully not too bad save some mosquitoes), the fire danger and how to mitigate it, how restrictive property modification is (not at all, there are no building codes!), how marketable my job skills are, what the locals are generally like, etc. Even got a recommendation from him on a prepper/homesteading group that can probably help me as well as his real estate agent he used to purchase his property (20ac/$100k with electric access if you were curious).

From what I learned, it pretty much confirmed everything I had generally read. It really sounds like an amazing place to be able to live and I can't wait to see it first hand!

[Ryan Ruck]

CD's Smoke Pit has been added to the stop list on Thursday when going through Moscow.

Also picked up a bottle of Laughing Dog's Anubis and The Dogfather tonight from Jungle Jim's.

[MinutemanCO]

Cool trip. Although, you can't drink a brew at Oskar Blues without coming through Colorado.

[Ryan Ruck]

Rolled into Sandpoint a little bit ago after about 2.5 days on the road.

Would have posted updates as we traveled but since we were sleeping in my van for the trip, it would have been a pain to pull out the laptop.

Not going to post any pics this post. Going to wait until we're back home and I can get the pics my brother took to add to mine.

Antique Archeology was pretty neat! Great to see the place where the show is in person. Even bought a small P-47 puzzle while I was there for $20. Most all the other stuff was $100+ and didn't really grab me.

The Iowa 80 truck stop was quite a sight! It was a bit like a shopping mall geared toward truckers. LOL! The fried chicken at the buffet was pretty decent!

Ended up spending the night in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Was completely awesome to come into the state and see real speed limits. For some strange reason, Sioux Falls felt a lot like the Canton/Akron area... Strange...

Started our trip back up the next morning and battled outrageous head winds that destroyed our fuel mileage. I can normally get 275-300 miles out of a tank on my van (a Transit Connect by the way) but I was lucky to get around 200!

While passing through South Dakota we noticed a Park Service sign for the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site and since we were due, decided to stop. Turns out, the day before we got there, they had just opened the new Visitor Center. They almost twisted our arms to take some opening ceremony cake still left over! Good cake! Since we were a bit tight on time, we didn't go visit the silo or launch facility itself. We are, however, going to stop there on the way back and see those because who the hell doesn't want to see an ICBM facility!

Starting in the latter part of South Dakota, the scenery started getting a lot more remarkable. Up until then, it was a lot of flat farm field.

As I mentioned in the NFL thread, we ended up in Rapid City yesterday in time to watch the last half of the Bengals-Broncos game at Firehouse Brewery amid a score of Denver fans. Didn't know Broncs' territory extended that far north. Had their pumpkin ale. Pretty good! Grabbed a growler (I've got a vacuum insulated one I brought on the trip!) of their Red that I'm finishing as I type this. Also pretty good!

Ended up wrapping up the day a little early in Billings and camping out there.

Started back up this morning and went through Butte, Bozeman, Missoula, St. Regis (MT), Coeur d'Alene, and finally winding up in Sandpoint.

We ended up stopping in Missoula to grab a light lunch and hit the head. Spotted a brewery called Kettle House. Going to try and hit that on the way back. Missoula struck me as a bit of a hippie town. Lots of art, theater, and people bicycling. Probably because of the college there... Still seemed nice otherwise.

Stopped in St. Regis to top off the fuel tank and grabbed a huckleberry shake. Apparently, huckleberries are kind of a big deal in this part of the country since they are put in everything! Also, their local school sports teams' logo looks vaguely familiar... I'll upload a pic when I upload all of them.

The Montana scenery is absolutely gorgeous!

Coeur d'Alene was nice as we drove through. Had all the stores you could need from a city without the downsides of being big.

The scenery of Sandpoint was equally stunning! The lake and small town is amazing to see as you cross the bridge.

Grabbed dinner at Mick Duff's Brewery. Had a sampler of beer. In an unfortunate coincidence they had an Arnold Palmer Gose on tap. Tried it and was floored at how much like an actual Arnold Palmer it tasted like! Every other beer in their sampler was good, didn't have one I didn't like. Forgot to keep track of all of them. Too distracted by our waitress...

After dinner, my brother and I headed out to stroll the town and the lakeshore a bit since Mick Duff's is just about right on the lake. Like I said, absolutely great! The weather is downright perfect right now too. One interesting thing I observed, I don't see any garbage anywhere around here! Like literally, nothing! The only thing I did see was a little graffiti but I assume that is the work of the artsy fartsy types of which there are certainly a number of in town.

As we were walking we ran into a rather, shall we say salt of the earth type, skinny, older gentleman by the name of Steve who was shirtless and whacking golf balls into the lake from the park. We were walking the path along the shore and he said he'd go ahead and let us play through so I told him my brother who was the golfer would better appreciate that. On learning that, Steve invited Devin to hit a few and spent some time talking with us. Turns out he's a transplant from Portland and has been in the area for about 5 years. Lives in a shack added to a couple trailers and does concrete. Likes the herb a bit. Nice guy! Which brings me to my other observation, everyone here is super friendly, smiling, saying hi, and vehicle traffic always giving the right of way to foot traffic. Really great atmosphere!

Overall, my first impressions of this place are 100% perfect (though some of the small gnats flying around near the lake were a little annoying!). As we were walking back to the hotel, I dared my brother to name a single negative so far and he couldn't come up with one. I've got to say, I agree!

Can't wait to see some of the other parts around the lake and north. My brother is going to be headed out for a round of golf on a local course.

[Ryan Ruck]

Just checked out of the hotel. Headed back to hio now.

Stopping at Missoula to hit Kettle House. Then Mt. Rushmore and the Minuteman Missile site again.

Decided not to go south since the two breweries down there don't open until late afternoon and we don't want to sit around for a couple hours.

[Ryan Ruck]

Made a stop at the home of warp drive (), Bozeman, MT, to grab dinner at B-Dubs and watch the Bengals game.

[Ryan Ruck]

Arrived home today around 3 hours ago.

Truthfully, it was more than a bit depressing having to leave Idaho and all of its beauty. It was gray and rainy from eastern Iowa home to punctuate it!

Mt. Rushmore was very cool! Awesome experience to get to see something in person you only normally see pictures of. Went and saw Devil's Tower since it isn't too far. Also very cool!

Ended up getting to the Minuteman site 15 minutes after the last tour of the day due to the tardiness of a certain someone with me. Was not too happy about that but hopefully we'll be able to make a trip next year and go then.

Overall, a really great experience! I don't know if the folks who live out there realize just how good they have it living in what is left of real America. I suspect you folks in CO are similarly lucky, maybe not with the libtard invasion, but at least with regards to the scenery.

Will be working on getting all of the pictures together this week.

[Brian Baldwin]

The libs in Colorado are mostly east of the Rockies. For how long I don't know... Hell, they could have already gotten through lol. When I was 4 and 5 I used to live in the panhandle of Idaho and I used to leave after breakfast into the woods and not come back until sundown. My mother tried everything to keep me home but I was a bit wild. Got a lot of ass whippings though too. It was the first area my father was transferred to after he joined the Treasury Department. Quite different from Southern Arizona. I remember my mother pointing out the pine trees when we arrived and told us not to climb them. And we were like... Shit; you can climb those? In Southern Arizona you don't climb anything green. So... We promptly started climbing the pine trees. I don't think my mother ever quite figured out boys.

[American Patriot]

Wow. I missed this thread entirely until this morning. Weird. Ok. Well, was the trip GOOD or did you just sleep in the van, drive and sleep in the van? lol

[Ryan Ruck]

Wow. I missed this thread entirely until this morning. Weird. Ok. Well, was the trip GOOD or did you just sleep in the van, drive and sleep in the van? lol

LOL! The trips out and back were about 2.5 days each. Slept the two nights on the road in the van (parked in hotel parking lots) which weren't terribly pleasant. I've done it before when I had Econoline work vans but not for the length of time this trip was. I will definitely not be doing it again in the Transit Connect though. It's just too small without storing luggage externally and the seats (of which one person had to sleep in while the other slept in back) suck.

Hopefully next year we'll have an RV for space and won't have to worry about showering at truck stops.

The sights we saw while on the road were very cool though!

[American Patriot]

Personally, if I had a van, I'd have outfitted it with cots or beds and stuck the luggage on the roof in a carrier. lol

[Ryan Ruck]

We had a twin mattress in the back that we switched off on using.

Wasn't able to find a roof top cargo carrier and no hitch to install a cargo basket on so my 65 qt Pelican cooler, loadout bag, GHB, and brother's suitcase rode inside.

These Transit vans just suck in terms of space though. No replacement for a real full size.

[Ryan Ruck]

I finally got around to getting all of the trip pictures together and uploaded to my Google Drive account. Well, there's a few pictures still on my brother's iPad but this is the bulk of them.

With as many pictures as there are, I figured it's easier to upload them to my Google Drive account for viewing instead of trying to post them all.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-...kUtd3ZVTDlfblk

You should be able to go to that link and look through the folder.

ETA: Just realized some of the pics I took aren't there... Guess I need to reupload them.

[Ryan Ruck]

Okay, pics fixed.

Just sort by name. IMG_2007 should be the first starting in Iowa at Antique Archeology. There wasn't much worth taking pics of in Indiana or Illinois.