Doing Some Exploring On the Riddle Ranch

Tuesday September 26, 2023 Riddle Ranch Idaho

Hunters

I was having my coffee around 8 this morning when I saw two things bobbing up and down way out there so I zoomed in with  my camera and saw these two guys.

When I returned from exploring later in the day, I ran into them as they were getting ready to  leave. They were from Petaluma, a city close to where I live and were hunting birds of some sort. I shot the bull with them.

Exploring

That was the plan for the day. I would explore some of the roads out here. The ranch area is huge and there are roads, but not nearly enough of them for the size of the place. I soon learned that the best way one could explore this place is with a horse and even that would take a long time. It’s been a cattle ranch for a long time and it’s all still run mostly with horses.

Took this road

To start off I took the first dirt road off from where I was camped and where I’m camped tonight as it is.

The road led to this hay field where there were a bunch of hay bails on the ground. This big plane flew by.

There’s an air base close by, so jets flew by occasionally, most of them going much faster than this one.

I turned around at the hay field and took another road off on another direction down this way.

I passed by these cattle at a water hole.

And a few miles more the road ended at this little creek, so I turned around again.

I got on this road which was leading me back to the main part of the ranch, but first I need to open that gate where the cows are. They let me pass, although slowly getting out of the way.

This hay machine passed me.

A lot of the ranch is irrigated so has a bunch of green grass for the cattle to feed on.

Exploring south

I saw a road that headed south towards the Reservation, so I took it to see if I could get all the way through to the Reservation as the map showed it did,…………But.

I went by this old earth mover that looked like it had been sitting here for years. Being the tallest thing around, birds sit on it a lot and it’s slowly turning it white.

The road going south was iffy at best. Sometimes the road was on the map but not on the ground and so it went.

This was a creek crossing I crossed over. It was shallow.

The road that the map showed I needed to take, wasn’t there anymore so I took the other one that went sorta the right way, but it was getting worse fast. It got rocky just past this area, so I wisely turned around and went back the way I’d come, just to be safe.

I didn’t really have a plan for tonight’s camp spot, so I went back to the hay field I was at this morning, chatting with the two hunters on the way there.

Camp

Just before dark, I took a short walk around the hay field.

Plans

I’m not sure about plans for tomorrow. I’ll likely go back to the Reservation to gas up and post blogs and then figure it out from there.

Nice day.