We Ride from Moonscapes to Hot Springs (a.k.a. Spa Day!) – Moto Travel Diaries [S1 Ep23]

Hey everyone! Welcome back to Notiers Frontiers.  It's Notiers Frontiers Diaries. Hey everyone!   Welcome back to Notiers Frontiers Diaries! In  this episode we're going to talk about one of   the most incredible days we had this summer. So we  started off in Salt Lake City in Utah, which is an   incredible state. We were visiting our friend,  Emiliano, in Salt Lake City. Awesome dude. And   we were heading north to Idaho. Now, we've been  to Idaho once before, but it was this tiny   corner. And it was actually really impressive that  one tiny corner. Because I always thought just  

"Idaho potatoes". I didn't know that it's  amazing. And to be honest, we just wrapped up last   episode with our buddy we met in Africa,  Emiliano. And he's awesome, and we really   didn't have a good reason, at first to go to... Like we didn't plan on going to Idaho in depth, but we  had a really good friend up there that we had   met at an expo years and years ago. And he kept  calling to us to come and check out some of the   beautiful scenery. Brandon. So we ended up headed  out to go see somebody that we had met at an expo  

in years passed, and we just loved the rekindling,  let it be with Emiliano from our African travels,   or people we've met at shows, or people we meet  in Walmart parking lots that extend their friendly   hands. So just a shout out to the other end of the  camera over there, a huge thank you to everybody   who watches and is generous. We don't expect  anything, and that's why it's just so magical when   it works out in everybody's favor, and we get  to meet and greet and are invited into people's   homes. Thank you! Thank you! And so that was  our destination was to go to Boise. And so from   Salt Lake City to Boise we didn't know what there  was to see. So we just kind of drew a line along   roads, and we were like, "Well, let's hope for  the best." But we did know one thing, because we   had been to that little corner of Idaho before,  and we'd gone through Logan Canyon. Yeah. And  

Logan is a town in northern Utah near the border  with Idaho, and there's a little canyon that goes   between Logan and Idaho. And we'd gone through it  before. That was seven years ago! A long time ago! It was on our Maiden Voyage. But you know, it's fun sometimes when you're  just kind of ignorantly riding around the   States, or in whatever country you're in,  or state you're in, it's like we're going   through this beautiful canyon, and it kind of  has an apex. And then you're at the top of it,   and there's this cool little town at the very  end, and we we dived in. And we knew that  

this time around we were close, and I said,  "We've got to go to that same pizza joint."   Oh, the pizza was so good! And we were like,  "Yes, we have to have pizza at that place again!"   It's called The Pizza Factory, and it's right  on that main street, and it's this basement   hole-in-the-wall place. But it has amazing pizza.  But we found it again! Seven years later.   You know, it's not like I marked it on my  Google Maps forever ago. It was amazing.

As soon as we saw it, I was like, "Oh, that's  the joint! That's the place right there!"   Yeah that's right. So we went there from Salt Lake  City to Logan. We had a very early lunch there. Peace, dude. Bye! And we were just sitting eating the pizza outside  of the restaurant, and this guy walked up to us.  

He owned the bar next door. And he was really  really nice. I mean, we look kind of weird with   our motorcycle and all of our gear and stuff,  and so people often talk to us just on the road.   And he was asking questions about our journey and  everything, and we told him our plan for the day.   And he said, "No no no no no! You have to  go through the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho."  

And he recommended that we camp overnight at a  place called Challis where they had hot springs   that were amazing. And so we redirected our plans.  We had planned on camping in the Craters of the   Moon, which also looks very interesting. It  does, it has a draw to it. And we love all types of   landscapes, but that one kind of seemed to putter  out in my imagination. Well... hot springs!  

I mean you just can't go wrong with that. That was  what was calling me. I was like yes, "I want to go   swim in some hot springs!" So we changed  our plans. He also recommended that we   take a different road into Idaho since we'd  already been through Logan Canyon before.  And it is kind of sad that we weren't able to  recreate that Logan Canyon experience because   we took this other road. It goes by Bear Lake. We're kind of going down memory lane, if you will.   But we're creating new memories. Exactly, and we  wanted to try a new road. And it was also nice.   It was nice. But instead of... I mean Idaho  looks like a chimney, right? And I can't do  

it with my fingers. I can't make Idaho with  my fingers, but we had this graceful line   towards Boise originally. And this time we kind  of had to do a hypotenuse leg. That's right, we   kind of made a steep angle. We went up north, and  then went southwest to Boise. But he said, "You'd be crazy not to go through these mountains." And he's a bicyclist. So he was like, "I do those roads  all the time. They're fantastic!"   But I mean, if it's good  for a bicycle, it's got to be good for   a motorcycle too. Yeah, for sure. So we took  his advice, and we headed up into Idaho.

When we first got into Idaho, it was mostly these  gorgeous rolling greenish hills. Not green like a   thick forest, but kind of that spring green,  even though it was the middle of summer. And   there were cows all over the place, and just  the hills, they were small but rolling. Really  

picturesque in its own interesting way. And the  road, there was nobody on it. It was a beautiful,   curvy road between the hills, and it was just us.  It was just a great feeling, like, "All right.   Now we're in Idaho." And something that I think  I've learned about Idaho from riding through it is   that it is not necessarily as popular of a  destination as some other places, as far as   crowded goes. But the nature, and just the scale of  how beautiful it is, is top-notch. Just some   of the best in the world. And it's up and coming.  People are catching on that Idaho is pretty cool. Right.   It's no longer a hidden secret anymore. But we did  find that the roads had less congestion on them,  

which was fantastic. And so we were making our  way through the hills. They were really beautiful,   and then they kind of stopped, and it became  this flat landscape that was super super windy. You could see that it was old volcanic  rocks, a volcanic landscape from long ago,   which made sense since we heard about hot springs  and whatnot. There must be a lot of volcanic   activity in that area. And these black rocks  would cover the desert landscape, and out in the   distance you might see some sort of old volcano  has-been, like an old cone or some mountain just   in the middle of nowhere that shouldn't be there  except for a volcano. And it was insanely windy.

It wasn't quite Argentina windy, but it was  very very windy. It was pretty close. Yeah and   I had to learn in Argentina, when you're over  far enough and you're using a phone as a GPS,   sometimes it will take it from horizontal mode and  put it into vertical mode, which sucks when you're   trying to follow a road. So now I've locked the  positioning on my phone to landscape. Because it's   just annoying. We're not riding sideways,  but you get to a certain point... It feels like it   sometimes. It does. And it's like when you're on  a roller coaster, or when you're in a go-kart,   you feel like you're going 80,000 miles an  hour, because you're that close to the ground.  

And on the motorcycles in the wind, I'm leaned  over maybe ten percent, but it feels like I'm at   a 45 degree angle or more, about to scrape pegs.  And then to the on-viewer as I zip by, I'm just...  Like a slight angle. But I think part of it is  also the strain of the wind. First of all, it's so   loud, it just takes over all your thoughts. You  can't think about anything else but this wind.   And then, if you were just to sit upright, maybe  it's just me, but I think it's for you as well,   then the wind is hitting your shoulders and  certain parts of your body. And it makes you  

not very aerodynamic. And so naturally you tend  to crunch down over the motorcycle in order to   be more with-the-wind aerodynamic. You're not a  burden against the wind. But that is a strain on   your muscles. You have to really be clenched and  tense the whole time. It's not a relaxing ride   to go through winds like that. No, and I'm glad I  don't have one of those beaks on my helmet. Yeah.   Because that would have driven me nuts.  But I just always... and this isn't a smart   thing to do, I've learned recently, but I  always leave my visor open just for airflow. But  

in small incidences where if we were to crash  or something, the windshield could just totally   nick you in the face. That's why you do have a wind  visor there. And I have a pretty weird setup on my   helmet. Because I hate it when my  visor slams down on me. So now I have a binder   clip that's attached to Marisa's hair tie, that is  attached to a GoPro mount, so that it can always   grab it. And so it keeps your visor up. Yeah,  it's a crazy system. But you were doing really   well with the wind. It was very intense, and I  kept looking in the distance like, "Something,  

save us, please!" When are the mountains going to  come? These incredible mountains that   I've heard about in Idaho for so long. And I could  see these mountains just way out there. I'm like, "Come   on, come on. We can get there. We can go." Because  I just wanted to get out of the wind. And I'd see   a tree every once in a while, and be like, "Oh,  a tree!" And it's all leaned over and straining   against the wind as well. We were just north of  Craters of the Moon National Monument, and it  

was so windy. And then we passed this little town  called Arco. And Arco looked very weird because it   had this cliff behind it with all of these huge  numbers painted on the cliff. And I was like,   "What is that all about?" I could not think for  the life of me why they painted those numbers   on the cliff. It went up to 70, and 80, and 90,  and then zeros, and I thought, well maybe they are  

mining the cliff, and then exploding them out in  different times. Like some video game? Like Dig Dug?   That's all I could think of. Some numbers  were really big, and some were really small.   Well, that must be a small section  that they're going to blow up.   I didn't know. And then they had all these signs  for nuclear energy, because I guess Arco was  

the first place on earth where they powered homes  using nuclear energy. There were signs like,   "Home of the Atom" or something. Maybe there's radium in the cliffs? I don't know.   So I looked it up, and it turns out that...  Lame. Lamest thing. What were you thinking? Was it as  

lame as the answer? Three... two... one. It's  the year people graduated from high school.   It's like a high school tradition.  So they would go to the cliff,   and then paint their graduation number on the  cliff. Sorry anyone from Arco. But that's lame.

So we passed through that, and  finally we got to these mountains. And I mean, it's not that passing through that  barren area was bad. The winds I thought were   very strenuous, but it's beautiful in its  own way. But I was really relieved to get  

to the mountains because it sheltered us from  the winds, but also I love the topography of   all the different hills surrounding us. And there  seemed to be gray ones, and red ones, and just   mountains everywhere we looked, just rippling off.  And very jaggedy mountains too. It was gorgeous.   At one point in time, we passed this green valley.  It seemed like a lot of people were irrigating for   their crops, and they had this bright green  hay grass growing. And it was so beautiful,   that contrast with the more barren mountain rocks.  And I thought, this is like a Garden of Eden. You have this water from these streams and rivers,   and they're able to grow these incredible green  crops, and trees and forests, and then also have   these rugged rugged mountains surrounding these  perfect valleys. And then we came upon Challis.  

And Challis was going to be our destination that  night, and I think it may be one of the most   perfect towns on the earth. Oh, I remember now. It was  so beautiful. You even saw some Pronghorn Antelope   there. Yeah, jumping over a fence from one  of the farms. So we put Challis into the   offline Google Maps, and we headed out.  And I was kind of tired from the day.   But we turned off the main road, and twisted down  alongside these these bluffs that were colorful.   And right now it's that golden hour, because  the sun's about to set. And so what was already  

beautiful, is now casted in molten iron. It was  just beautiful. It really was. And we pulled up to   this... they're hot springs with a campground.  And so they have RV parking there, but also tent   camping because they have beautiful lawns of  perfect grass, and trees with shade. And we  

set up our tent, and it had this view of the  mountains. On one side, it was gray, kind of black   jagged mountains. And the other side it was  these red sandstone cliffs. And we could smell,   kind of, not too strong, but a little bit, the  sulfur in the air. We knew the hot springs are   really close. They said they're just over in that  building. Check them out. And they had outside of   the building, an area where the hot springs  were just natural, bubbling up from the ground.   And the original source of the hot springs was  too hot for humans to go into. It's very hot.

And so they channeled them off into two separate  different pools at a 10 degree difference,   which was like 50 degrees less than the  natural one. But it was really cool. And I...   Like, saunas, like hair day, to me, I don't  really care to go to hot springs.   But it was really awesome. It was getting  cold though. And I knew those waters are  

going to be hot. It's in the name. And we're  going to get out and then try to go to sleep,   and we'd be like, "This is freezing!" But you  know, they had a nice little changing area there   that was heated. And so we were able to just  get dry and change, and then snuggly go into   our sleeping bag after we went swimming. But back  to the hot springs, because it's Spa Day now!   And I am on board! That's the glory of, that's the story of love. It's amazing. And the bottom of the pool was all  natural. Rocks, like pebbles. River pebbles. And  

it was just so fantastic. And that water was  so crystal clear. And it didn't really smell   that bad. In fact, I don't think it smelled like  anything once I got there. And it was just clear,   and the perfect temperature. They did  have another pool that was even hotter. We   didn't know about that at the time. But it  didn't matter, because the first was so perfect.   The sun was going down against the cliffs, and  it was just just surrounded by this complete   paradise. It was a paradise, this crystal  clear hot water coming up from the earth into   this mountainous landscape, creating this green  valley of lushness... it doesn't get better than  

that. Yeah, and then we did go to sleep, and  had happy thoughts. And it got pretty chilly,   and then the next morning we woke up, and it was  like we were camped next to a nuclear reactor.   I mean the hot springs were just plummeting  clouds off of them. It was stunning. So   beautiful. So if you ever find yourself in  Idaho, I highly recommend going to Challis. Spa day! But then we took off the next morning, and  my brother had texted me saying, "Hey man,   you're right next to lake whatever-the-heck.  Are you going to go there?" And I had never  

heard of it... Well, that is going to be in our  next episode. Oh, so what was this one about?   Just spa day? Yes, just spa day. Now we know the  title everybody. You just figured out with us.   So I hope you liked this episode. If  you did, please give us a thumbs up,  

and hit the subscribe button below. And I hope  to be seeing you next time when we go through   the Sawtooth Mountains. Incredible. Beautiful. Stay safe everybody! Bye!   Peace! You want to see my cat? Yes you do. Who  doesn't want to see a cat? This is Mr. Moto man.

2021-11-17 20:26

Other news