Road to Elk City
On the 17th of May this year, my mother and I went on a road trip to pick up my significant other from his work camp in remote central Idaho. I knew I needed and wanted to get some photos of the scenery on the way and I was chomping at the bit to get going. I haven’t been able to do much traveling the last nine months due to school, work and being pregnant. I was so excited to get out of town and see what my love had been describing when we would FaceTime. He said it was beautiful and he would happily live in the area. As an avid outdoorsman, I could tell he was finally in his element. After over a year in tiny empty towns mostly populated by sage brush across Nevada, he was in the kind of location he most loved and his eyes were so bright. The biggest benefit for me personally is that he’s no longer a 14 hour drive away, now he is only a quick 4 hour drive. And that drive is beautiful! My goal for this trip was to take as many pictures as I could, for my personal portfolio and to submit for classes.
Heading south through Washington I had already seen the fields of the Palouse and was no longer intrigued by them. From the beginning of the drive until after we left Lewiston, apart from the cattle on the hills and crests as you come down that lengthy hill, I wasn’t really interested in having my mom, the driver, slow down to give me a chance to get a shot.
Once out of town the sights got better and the hills became a luscious green. We were on a bit of a time crunch, and my mom drives like a 98 year old partially blind lady, so I didn’t want to take too terribly long when I asked her to slow down or stop. We ended up being an hour late anyway… from Lewiston to Grangeville was beautiful. Old train bridges, passes on the highway surrounded in pine and spruce displaying different shades of green through the rays of sun that touched them. A pull out with thigh high boulder rocks making a barrier between the edge of the pull out and the steep slope that dropped down to a river at least 200 feet down. In one of my classes we’ve emphasized composition, juxtaposition and our own style of photography, what we’re passionate about capturing and what we can do to improve our work and fuel our creativity and passion. I made an image of a top edge of one of the boulders. It looked like an aerial shot of a mountain ridge.
With so many things to look for, while going between 45 and 65 miles an hour, I tried to use a fast shutter speed and auto focus to capture the elements flying by. I was only partially successful in this.
The best part of this whole endeavor – besides the reunion of my beloved and myself after a 20 day hitch – and sort of the scariest as well, was Grangeville to Elk City. The road becomes narrow and the shoulders transition from ditches to cliffs and if you drive too close to the edge or are passing another rig coming the opposite direction, it can make you get that panicked feeling you get when you think you’re going to fall to your death. We didn’t fall to our death but I can’t describe how relieved we were when we finally got to the bottom of that canyon. On the way down, were gorgeous views of the canyon covered in green with a silvery winding river weaving around the edges of the valley. At the bottom, we followed along a river with enticing white water that brought back memories of when I sought an adrenaline rush by rafting those sorts of waters on the Middle Fork of the Flathead River starting inside Glacier Park years ago when I was still a Montana resident.
There were many natural water features along this river, flowing the opposite direction we were driving which gave me a great view of the boulders and islands and fallen submerged timber where ducks and geese would swim around to catch a break from the strength of the water. With cars behind us wanting to get by us, we tried not to keep traffic backed up. The walls up the sides of the road were rocky and there were multiple places where slides had begun or had happened and been cleaned up. It’s a regular occurrence to be stuck either up the canyon or stuck on the town side due to spring rock slides. The contrasting colors in the rocks were beautiful in the last hour of sun. There were so many deer! An alarming amount actually, to the point my mother was going 15 under the speed limit because she was so afraid one of the deer would be suicidal and damage her precious Ford F150 she lovingly dubbed, “LeRoy”.
We zoomed past a beaver in a calmer more shallow area of the river, which I only noticed last minute, and of course, there were folks behind us, so mom wasn’t stopping. There were Canadian geese with their goslings waddling about on the shore, while others were guiding their young along the edges of the river, conditioning them for the currents. We were able to make a complete stop to get a few shots of them. A very large boulder a little more than half the width of the road hung precariously over us for a brief moment, in which we both ducked and hoped it would decide to drop the moment we went beneath it. Beautiful pops of yellow and purple spotted the oranges and umbers of the canyon walls, which were bypassed even with my protest.
Once we finally reached the last 5 miles before officially reaching Elk City, the road seemed to narrow even more, and with a sudden heavy downpour that came from basically nowhere, the roads were wet and potentially slick and the river to the right of us was replaced with large creeks and ponds that were not protected by guardrails, leaving me more weary of my mothers driving. It eventually flattened out into deep green fields, ponds and softly rolling hills. The town had a bar that only served beer and food, a school, a laundromat, a tiny grocery store and some resident homes with either livestock or car parts in their yards. Not even a gas station. Up until this point, we’d not lay eye on any of the elk that were supposedly everywhere around this place. We reached our destination about 20 mins out of Elk City, rounded up our passenger and his things and went to the bar for supper. The Elk were right where my Love had told me they were every day, and it turns out, my mother and I aren’t as observant as we thought because we literally drove by an open field full of elk and didn’t see them at all. I was most excited and looking forward to seeing these elk, as I hadn’t seen elk since Montana, and they were becoming scarce to see unless you trolled the back roads along the privately owned alfalfa fields where they knew they were safe from hunting.
This herd wasn’t super sizey, but they were entertaining. Some leapt around like puppies with the zoomies, splashed around in the creek, chased each other and others lazily grazed the rich grasses in the meadow. I wanted so badly to get closer, to sneak my way into a thicket and get photos on a more grounded perspective, but I was 38 weeks – though it felt like 90 weeks, pregnant. My mother and boyfriend wouldn’t even hear of it.We enjoyed fried spinach and cheese ravioli, and crispy chicken sandwiches at the most popular establishment in town, the bar, officially named the Elkhorn Saloon.
Once full and ready to get back on the road, it was plenty dark and my camera was officially off duty for the remainder of the trip.
During the summer break between the two years of school I am taking, I will get to take that trip many times to bring my newborn daughter, our beloved chocolate lab and I back together with our favorite person, my boyfriend. I will be driving those times, and it won’t take me all day to do it, but I have much more opportunity to take my time and I plan to reap those benefits.
My favorite subjects to photograph are my dog, my brand new baby daughter, wildlife and landscape. Those are what I want out of a photography career. I love doing portraits, but my heart is in the wilderness.
