We’ve really been enjoying Idaho so far (it’s our new favorite state!) and we are excited to check out the Ketchum/Sun Valley area! We are meeting up with a couple friends from Atlanta- Chris and Kat, who are riding Rebecca’s Private Idaho bike race in Ketchum over Labor Day weekend.
After our incredible ride at Grand Targhee, we headed towards Idaho Falls and then Ketchum. We passed through some cute towns on the way up to Ketchum, and stopped to give Miles a car wash because he was filthy from all the gravel roads, and he desperately needed one! When we got to Ketchum, we parked Miles in the National Forest dispersed camping about 6 miles outside of town in the sunny hills of the valley, and took a little hiatus from RV life for the weekend. Reet, Juke and I went to stay with Chris and Kat in the townhouse they rented right in downtown Ketchum – it was so fun catching up with them, and great to see familiar faces again after so long on the road! Juke seemed to enjoy having a bit more space too, and took advantage of it by running around and exploring the house.
Ketchum has a great Asian restaurant called Rickshaw, which we ended up at two different nights over the weekend. The Pioneer saloon was also a lot of fun – kind of like a western dive bar, and a good time in the evening. The Cellar was a cool local bar, where we got some great tips on where to go next. As we talked to people in Ketchum, we kept hearing about Stanley and Redfish Lake, so we added them to our route! We love local tips!
The area has several long distance paved bike paths, and Saturday morning the four of us rode out almost to Hailey, before turning around for some lunch back in town. We also found some awesome mountain bike trails very near Ketchum. The White Cloud trail system has some scenic, flowy trails just outside town, and connects to the Fox Creek trailhead where we rode the Fox Creek loop, a fun 7-mile loop with a couple decent hills.
On Sunday, RBI (Rebecca’s Private Idaho) was a good time- we cheered on Chris and Kat as they finished the race. We had signed up to help volunteer with the race, but they had a ton of volunteers and we ended up not being needed. So instead we helped them recover from 100 miles of biking with some beers and live music. ?
On Monday we said goodbye to Chris and Kat as they took off for their flights home, and went back to RV life! We camped in the Sawtooth Recreation Area just north of town, where we found some great dispersed (free!) camping sites overlooking the beautiful Sawtooth mountains. We rode right out of our site and across SR75 to check out more of the trails in the Fox Creek area. The air was pretty thick with smoke from all the wildfires in the area (OR, MT, ID) and the air quality was red online, but luckily it cleared up a bit in the afternoon. (The air quality website became one of my top visited for a few weeks.) We rode up Saddle Trail to the Chocolate Gulch loop, took that to Fox Creek, then back the same way. It was about 12 miles total, and Reet did about 4 more miles by doing the whole Fox Creek trail. Great trail with some nice elevation – around 2200 feet. We stayed one more night at our pretty site at the base of the Sawtooths before heading to Galena and Stanley – check out our next post for more on them!
