Middle Fork of the Salmon

A guided 6 day rafting trip in Idaho’s River of no Return Wilderness. August 2018

Before they were wiped out by the settlers, the native people from this part of Idaho used to call themselves 'the people who live under the red sun'. Dry lightening starts fires every summer and they put so much smoke into the air that the sun appears as a red orb. There are currently 7000 fires burning across the western US at the moment, while the eastern states have 30 million folks suffering from floods! We got to see the red sun, and have shaken the ash off our tents in the morning.

We've spent the last six days rafting the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, and it has been wonderful. There was a bit of a concern when we first arrived at the motel the night before: there were a disturbing number of folks with prayer hands on their t-shirts, and the decor included wall hangings of welded horse-shoes in the shape of crosses, each decorated with bandanas! The town of Salmon has a population of ~3000 and one entire shop is dedicated to cowboy hats.  

We were further perturbed when one of those on our six day rafting trip (only nine guests, so reasonably intimate) stated that scientists have incorrectly calculated the speed of light, and that most Americans were doing really well - only those that don't want to work are on welfare, immigration was driving down wages, and that he supported Trump. Gulp. Turns out that he was actually quite a nice guy, on a trip with his brother and father for his Dad's 75th. They were all really decent, once you put aside their belief in creationism.