Day 8: Chesterfield on the Oregon Trail

We bought some food at Mike’s Market in Lava Hot Springs and chowed down a breakfast at Chuck Wagon Restaurant. The name brought back 1970s memories of our family eating at the Chuck Wagon restaurant “all you can eat buffet” on DelaVina (Validation Annex is there now).

We rode across two river-valleys thru lots of ranch land. The town of Chesterfield was interesting in that there were several abandoned buildings but a few new ones and one was getting a new roof on it. It seems like they are trying to bring it back from the dead.

We rode on some desolate looking roads to the most remote campground so far – Sage Hen campground on the Blackfoot river. We filtered several liters of water and got our feet cooled off. A small herd of cows came to visit us but they were spooked and ran off as soon as Bob stood up and started talking to them.

A deer and some cool birds like herons entertained us during our campsite dinner. The fast river shallow rapids was a nice sound that helped me sleep.

We road 40 miles and about 2500ft of climbing.

Next we ride 50 miles to the town of Blackfoot.

No buffet but we enjoyed it
Nice Butte looking over the town. View from restaurant
One of the local stories
The town wants to come back to life
I think the key reason is “long cold winters”
They built a kiln to make bricks – LOTS of bricks
Near the summit of our ride
Long desolate road with headwind
Nice sunset near our river campsite

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