To Silver City – Almost

Out today for a drive along the Owyhee Front we discovered the road to Silver City, Idaho. Silver City is not open now, but we were excited by the views and the smooth pavement at the beginning. Also, the sign that warned travelers if they passed it and had to be rescued that the cost would be on them! C’mon, you see a sign like that you just gotta go investigate, right? Besides, it was a cool day, no fires anywhere, no chance of any kind of precipitation, A beautiful clear blue sky above us.

Keep in mine, unlike everyone else in Idaho, we don’t own a three story 22 cylinder pick-up truck. We have a tiny Kia Soul. 4 Cylinder engine, low ground clearance, designed for good paved highways and city traffic. Not a road from hell. Yet, we have taken the Kia on many such roads, and it has thrived. As long as you can deal with a top speed of 7 miles per hour. Occasionally a burst to eight.

This map shows you about where we stopped. Five miles from Silver City. The paved highway turned into a rocky dirt road hugging cliffs and hills where no guard rail has ever lived. And that was the good section of the road. We were eventually strongly encouraged by some locals in one of those three story pick-up trucks to turn back, that the “road” up ahead turned into just a pile of large boulders. Also, our Kia Soul did not have much ground clearance and sagebrush being everywhere we did not want our car to start a fire. Because in Idaho, they will charge you for the cost of putting the fire out.

See Boise in the upper right? That’s our home. Toward the bottom you see the red marker? That is Silver City. The blue X? That is where we turned around. Do you see the highways there? No, we didn’t either! Enjoy the photos below!