Murrs Across America

We stopped for lunch at “Canoe Camp” just outside of Orofino, where Lewis and Clark stayed for ten days to build five dugout canoes. While there, Brady assumed the character of Captain Lewis and dictated that I should be Captain Hook…Clark…no, Captain Hook, his partner. Jane was Sakakawea and Daddy was Seaman. This is an excerpt from his role-play.

The Journals of Captain Brady Merry Weather Lewis, a Rock Star

By Brady Murr (age three)

This is my canoe. I chopped it with my sword and scooped it out with a shovel. You know why I don’t have a paddle? Because my canoe floats in the water.

Onward to the Pasickic Ocean! (When we get there it will be called the Lewis and Clark Ocean!)

You’re my partner, Captian Hook. What would you like to eat? I’ve bought these tomatoes at the pinecone store—I have carrots growing in my yard at my house but they’re not ripe yet.

My house is blue with a pink roof. It is across the river.

Last night I stayed at a hotel instead of my house, because that’s the rules, I guess.

When we ride down the river we fish. We eat fish and drink river. (I have a green fishing pole).

There is a river shark in the river.

I told president Jefferson I saw animals on my trip. I saw giraffes and penguins. I called this river Penguin River. Penguins do not fly.

My dog is named Seaman. I brought him with me on the trip because he said he wanted to come. Seaman likes to play with his raccoon and sometimes he likes to play with Sakakawea. He catches fish in the water. He scared away some bears, elephants and giraffes.

Me and Captain Clark both go poo-poo in the potty, but I think they goed pee-pee in the river.

I brought three important things on the trip: baby, my sword, and my pi-tar (guitar). I hold my baby. I kill animals and pirates with my sword.  I use my pi-tar to play songs that rock out.

After saying goodbye to the Ulmers, we ran into the Ulmers at the grocery store seven miles down the road. There are some people in life, I’m convinced, that you’re just meant to run in to.

After saying goodbye to the Ulmers, we booked it down Highway 12 beneath hulking clouds along the Clearwater River. We biked quickly on the edge of the storm and water for 23 miles to Orofino, and managed only to get sprinkled on. There was a huge wind as we arrived at Orofino’s city park, then it dissipated, and that was the end of all that anticipation.

We met Roberta, who kindly invited us to stay at her home, and we also met Paul and Lee at the park who invited us to stay in town at their hotel. I made an awkward call to Roberta’s voicemail, and we ended up staying at the Helgeson Place Hotel in a spacious and spotless two-bedroom apartment suite.  But there’s more story to the hotel than that, and here it is:

Karen likes to go to work more than she enjoys her days off. She loves her job because she works in a luxurious place, everyone at her job is good at what they do, she works as part of a team where everyone helps one another, and she genuinely cares about the people she works with because they’re her community. Karen is a housekeeper at the award winning Best Western Lodge at River’s Edge.  She read her card from Lee and Paul aloud and loudly: “Thank you for all your hard work and your contribution to our success.” Beaming, she exclaimed proudly, “You’re welcome!”.

For the past four years, the River’s Edge Lodge (owned by Lee and Paul in addition to the hotel where we stayed—the Lodge was full) has been in the top 5% of 2,400 Best Western hotels nation wide. This year they’re in the top 1%, and the housekeeping manager earned the title of Housekeeper of the Year. The Lodge has been recognized for outstanding customer care, quality assurance, and design, and is managed by Tana, who says she is passionate about customer service. When I asked her how she built a team that is so enthusiastic about their work, she said simply, “We’re a team. I’m not in an office, I’m on the front line with them.”

Karen and others commented that when one person is finished with their rooms, they’ll help another person out with theirs until all the jobs are finished, and that this momentum is what motivates them to take such pride in their work. The accolades as a result of their excellence, according to Tana, are just icing on the cake. Tana, who worked in the Las Vegas hospitality world before taking on management of her father’s lodge, also says that because the team genuinely cares for one another, because they pay attention to the details of each other’s personal life, they are all extremely interested in helping each other out.

Paul made several calls to ensure our total comfort last night. The employees I learned so much from shared their food and celebration with us. Lee recognized that Brady ran across the playground with “total joy in his whole person”.  For their hospitality, teaching, and warmth we are incredibly grateful to the Orofino River’s Edge Lodge and Helgeson Place Hotel teams. Thank you.

p.s. Bernice, our room was outstandingly clean! GREAT work!

The color has drained from the rocks since we left Montana. Over the continental divide in the Clearwater National Forest, the rocks are more rugged and grey, but cloaked also with an extensive earthen palate of lichens and mosses that deeply animate the banks of the Lochsa (pronounced “lock saw”) and ground the firs and ancient cedars of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.

The ride from our thimbleberry oatmeal breakfast down scenic Highway 12 was breathtaking. It drizzled. We met some motorcyclists. Stuart’s red jacket blazed against the wet greens of the trees and river. Falls like silver chains scored cliffs. White water cheered us downstream. The kids sang Christmas songs.

We met a family on an adventure from Wichita at Lowell, and Shelly, the store attendant there gave us some buffalo jerky and wished us well on our journey. She and her husband made the leap from Seattle area to realize their dream of owning a business in a rural community. A cherry tree outside the store provided a yummy treat.

While the stop in Lowell was sunny all around, a few miles down the road things clouded over, literally, and about the time Stuart stopped to fix his flat rear tire, it started to rain again. With 22 miles to go for the evening I was less than enchanted with the rain this time, but it didn’t last long and we eventually made it to Kooskia, where we met Tina and Doug Ulmer, out for an evening stroll.

The pair pointed us in the direction of the town’s restaurant, then invited us to barbeque at their house, then invited us to spend the night. They see lots of bikers pass through town, and sometimes they go talk with them, but they don’t generally have them over.

The Ulmers are very busy. We talked about the shifts in challenges as kids age and the trials and rewards of life and relationships that revolve around schedules of teens.  We had the pleasure of meeting young Garhett, a lifeguard who recently won a national high school inventor’s competition. His team constructed and demonstrated an incinerator burn barrel for inversion zones. He says he got a really big medal. Kyndahl, fourteen, graciously pulled out the old Barbie castle for the kids.

Thank you, Ulmers, for your generous hospitality.

This was the day we’ve thought about since the inception of the trip: the day we cross the continental divide. We’ve had near daily reminders in our interactions with folks that there are, in fact, a broad range of mountains out west before our final destination. We generally politely tell people that we’re going to cross the Rockies where Lewis and Clark did at Lolo Pass, and then we address the other queries, which may or may not call into question our sanity.

I’ve always taken quiet comfort in the name of the pass. Sounds cute, short. But we anticipated that the day would be a doosie, with nearly 60 miles before services and with a long 2000 foot climb.

Despite our anticipation, today was beautiful. Our friend, Tom, was along with us. He graciously shuttled our gear and sleeping children up and over the pass, and Stuart and I enjoyed our second “alone time” on the trip. (The first alone time was in Missouri, when my parents took the kids for the night and we camped at Klondike Park along the Katy trail. Technically, I hesitate to qualify this as “alone time” due to the merciless hoard of mosquitoes in attendance).

It turned out to be sort of a joy ride. Our bikes were light, the climb was gradual, we watched water-bombing planes fight a fire. When we reached the summit we took goofy pictures then descended through the Lolo National forest to the DeVoto Memorial Cedar Grove, where 3000-year-old western cedar trees dwell harmoniously in the subalpine fir ecosystem. The space is inspiring, which is probably why DeVoto chose to camp here while editing the Lewis and Clark journals. Our descent was fast and flying. I believe we dropped 2000 feet in 13 miles.

We met up with Tom and the kids in Powell, and Tom drove us down the road to a campground where we made camp and ate thimbleberries, which taste like pomegranate raspberries and are one of the primary sources of vitamin-C for fairies.

I’m sitting at breakfast with the family and Chris, our new friend who is circumscribing the country making his own route. He’s twenty-one. He wears a tye-dyed San Francisco tee shirt when he’s not riding, a dark tanned back when he is. Currently, he’s making his famous, sustaining, caloric intake treat: a flour tortilla smeared with peanut butter, honey, two tablespoons of Tang drink mix powder and a tablespoon of powdered milk. He calls his concoction “food” and claims it is the perfect solution for keeping one healthy for dirt cheap. He’s living on $50 a week, after all, his sister has taken over his paper route in Grand Rapids and is reserving this payment for him. Chris is great with the kids, and a fabulous addition to our pack. Yesterday when we were riding with him on Old Highway 2 through canola fields, nuclear missile caches, and oil fields, it felt like being a kid and riding bikes with your buddy. We could have been chasing bad guys, or flying to mars.

You can follow Chris’s adventure here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Springfield-MO/Murrs-Across-America/284089620749?v=photos&ref=ts#!/pages/Chris-Steffens-Grand-Adventure/137692636244200?ref=mf