Hiking

Spring has finally arrived and, as usual, is very finicky. Since the weather has been so nice lately I've been wanting to go hiking. As I'm sure you know, North Idaho has lots of great hiking places. There are even some right in town. It would help if I actually knew how to get to them. Having grown up here, you'd think I'd know. Sadly, that is not the case. Last year we found some trails on Canfield at the end of Nettleton Gulch Road, which isn't terribly far from where we live. On Sunday we decided to go hiking around back there in the afternoon. Upon our arrival we discovered many people on dirt bikes. While pedestrians are allowed on the trail, we opted not to stay and risk getting run over by said dirt bikes. This caused a bit of a dilemma. You see, I know that there are pedestrian only hiking trails on both Canfield Mountain and Best Hill. Sadly, I do not know how to get to them or even a vague idea of where they are. I have hiked on both hills as a teenager, but the last time was probably close to ten years ago and I wasn't driving then. There is a park that is right at the base of Best Hill that we decided to go to and see if there were any trails we could follow leading out of there. There weren't but we were so desperate at that point that we just started walking and made our own trail. It had been raining for a good portion of the day at that point, so the tall grass was very wet, and by the time we finished so were our pant legs. We had a good time. At one point we were nearly attacked by a "wild" animal. There are a few houses up on the hill and we strayed dangerously close to one. We were going to give it a pretty wide berth, but wanted to pass it on our quest to continue going up. There were two dogs that spotted us and started barking and running toward us. One was on a chain. The other...was not. It was definitely not pleased by our proximity. Once we realized the lack of restraints, we quickly turned and walked back down the hill a good ways. We ended up not getting very far up the hill because we had to backtrack so far, then go a good bit over so as to give the house in question a really wide berth. By the time we got just a little above where the house was (and significantly to the side of it) we were getting tired and decided to go home. Now, if I could just find a map of some actual hiking trails...