Trail Run in Moc3s Along the Snake River at Celebration Park in Southwest Idaho

I read a story recently where a young woman had lived all her life in Bagdad, but had never been outside its limits or seen a camel.  My world would probably be similar, if God hadn’t brought me Wild Greg.  The man knows just how to look at me while playfully saying something that means:  “Hey, let’s go out into unknown territory and make ourselves exhausted as we test the ability of our bodies to maintain homeostasis!”  And I take his hand and go.

A couple of weeks ago, the destination was Celebration Park, by the Snake River in southwest Idaho.  Wild Greg took me and two of our girls down roads that had been recently created, for better access to the trail heads.  At this jumping off point, there are some reasonable restrooms, and a newly erected engraved monument about the old bridge that goes over the canyon.  Past all of this is a labyrinth of trails on which to skip through the sage brush.

The plan that day was to go for about a 9 mile run.  The two younger girls, both high school cross country stars, have been well trained by their father.  They know to always be prepared that he may try to get them lost, then tell them to find their way to base, whether it be the car or home.  If I’m not with Wild Greg, he usually tries to make sure that I’m with one of them.

I was wearing my Moc3s, because the places Wild Greg goes are generally rugged.  Here, in Celebration Park, the trail would vary from deep sand full of hidden sharp rocks to wet, slippery clay packed by cattle foot traffic.  Plus, the air temperature was barely 40 degrees Fahrenheit, with a chill wind.  Survival was going to be challenging enough.  It helped me to think my feet were shod like a wise Indian’s.  🙂  I also wore my ear warmers and my new running vest until about the half-way point.

At the beginning, the trail was a single-lane, gravel-covered, dirt road.  There were two other small groups of hikers who had started just ahead of us.  One group had the friendliest loose dog I’ve ever met:  Roscoe.  Kiwi’s warning behavior didn’t phase him a bit.  The other group had Molly, who was a close runner-up for “I’m a happy dog and I’m SO glad to meet you.”  We passed them all, their dogs obviously disappointed they couldn’t come along for the run.  Still, Wild Greg, well aware of my discomfort with unknown dogs, made himself and Kiwi the focus of attention while I ran by.

The next thing the girls and I knew, we were in the middle of a herd of skittish cattle.  The beasts were large and intimidating, especially when it was unclear which direction a group of them was going to run.  A few of them decided that one side of the trail was better than the other side.  A couple of them ran to the edge of the path and back, all of this with a quickness of step that made me know I could not out run them.  Wild Greg was coming along behind, exuding the aura of “Oh, look, the fun is beginning!  Why are you hesitating to run through the stampeding animals?”

 

I gave the camera to the fastest runner and made her run back and forth between us, getting photographs.  Except not through the narrow, winding, twisting, full-of-large-boulders sections.  Those were also often the places where we lost the trail and ran in hilly circles for a while.  The trail is not nearly so distinct as the map above makes it look.  In fact, there are many paths intersecting and some leading nowhere.  I think some of the wild animals have conferences there at night and send out committees to create misleading webs of  trails.

We came to a solidly made rock house that grabbed Wild Greg’s attention.  He stopped to look and talk about it with the girls, but I kept going.  I don’t stop and start well while in the middle of a run.  Of course, I didn’t know where I was going, but I figured they would be right behind me.  After a while, I glanced back and saw they were specks on a hill waving at me.  I waved back, turned around and proceeded.  A little while later, the girls were racing breathlessly toward me, yelling, “Mom!  It’s time to TURN AROUND!”  Huh.

We passed the rock house again and Wild Greg really wanted to show me the inside.  It had some impressive beams holding up the ceiling, and well-framed windows.  Somebody had moved a lot of sacred Indian rocks to build that, but I could only look for so long.  I told everyone I was leaving, and began to run again.

 

The river was on the left, but we ended up much closer to it now than we had on the way out.  After a while, Wild Greg began to make comments about this not being the way we came and did I know where we were?  I hate it when he does that.  We passed through a burned section of shore that reminded me of Mordor.  Then a wall rose up on the right of us, pinning us between it and the river.  I wondered if the car was up there and we were running right by it, destined to wander for miles.

 

If I had been more observant at the start of the trail, I would have seen Guffey Bridge near the parking lot.  We couldn’t have passed that without knowing it.  I began to remember that I am the only one who really gets lost.  Well, it’s better than being out with a group of people just like myself.  With great relief, I recognized the home stretch and tried to speed up as well as I could.  The car was only a couple of hundred feet away!

Then I saw two ladies on horseback were at the gate leading to the trails.  They, accompanied by their loose, grouchy-looking mutt, seemed to be waiting on their huge horses for someone to show up and open the gate.  We were the only people we had seen for miles, so hopefully they had a back-up plan.  What irked me, was that here I was at the end of my run, putting in a hard effort and they made no attempt to let me through.  Playing chicken with horses seemed imprudent, so I reluctantly slowed to a walk, then stepped to the side while one of the girls opened the gate for them.  They rode past like royalty.  hmpf.

 

It was time for us to congratulate each other on another successful expedition.  We posed for pictures and talked about where we had been.  It would have been a ways more until we passed the bridge, since we had driven a bit on a dirt road, out of the paved parking lot.  Good landmark to know, though.  😉  One daughter said the cross country team had run on trails on the other side of the bridge, but they were narrower and on the mountainside, so slipping was a problem.

 

 

 

If you long for open spaces to run in, with fresh air and no motorized vehicles, this is a good place to keep in mind.  It’s only about a half-hour’s drive from Nampa and offers beautiful views of the Snake River.  But if you have a limited sense of direction, like I do, please take someone who has a more reliable internal compass!