Odds are seriously good that next summer, for a short 5-days, Caroline and I will be out on this river. This is the Selway up in the middle of nowhere, Idaho. From Hamilton, Montana, where our group meets up, we’ll have an 82-mile (132km) drive to the Paradise Campground in Idaho, where we’ll get on the river. With Europe looking like a no-go for 2021, we are opting to get uncomfortable once again having to deal with some Class IV rapids. With 1,127 miles (1,813km) to drive to get up that way, it would be a shame to spend two days driving up and two days driving back, so we’ll consider leaving ten days early for some camping and hiking to get into the rhythm of being in wild nature before we put-in on the river. We considered Yellowstone for about 2 seconds until we thought about the summer crowds, and anyway, we’ll be in the vicinity of the Sawtooth, Salmon-Challis, Payette, Lolo, and Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests before heading into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness so we should be able to find some interesting lands to explore. On the other hand, we could opt for a crazy road trip heading up through eastern Nevada, across the southwest corner of Idaho, into Oregon, up through the middle of Washington to Prince George, British Columbia, in Canada before continuing for another 1,400 miles to Dawson City in the Yukon up near the Alaska border. This trip would cover 3,300 miles (4,400km) each way, but here in my late 50s, the idea of a 6,600 mile (10,600km) road trip sounds difficult, but then again, it won’t get any easier as we get older, so maybe we should tackle something like this while we can?

We have a little less than six months before we leave, so there’s plenty of time to mull things over, but this will be tough as the options grow as I write this. I just discovered that we could catch a ferry bringing our car onboard and heading up the Inside Passage of Alaska to Skagway before continuing up to Whitehorse and then heading south to our white water adventure. I’ve got some research ahead of me.

Update: This trip never happened as family obligations in Germany shifted all of our plans in 2021.