I have two kids that attend BYU Idaho in Rexburg. They’re always asking me to ride up there. So I finally planned a ride from our home in Highland to Rexburg. I called it the “Spud Run.”
The route planning took over a year. The largest obstacle is the vast amount of private land held on the east side of the Wasatch range. But I got a rough plan together and started pre-riding sections late this summer. From my pre riding I knew this would be a fast ride – lots of smooth gravel roads, and for better or worse, lots of asphalt.
The other obstacle to the ride is my kids class schedules. My son has classes until Friday afternoon. So this meant he only had a day and a half to ride (we don’t ride on Sundays; we all need a day of rest!). So, in order to make this ride work, we decided to do it backwards. We’d leave from Rexburg and ride south to Highland.
The crew consisted of our regular riders – My two sons (Axle Alex and Trailmaster Trent) in our blue razor; my dad (Petrol Papa) and I in our red razor. My mom (Navigator Nana) took the solo job of driving the chase truck and trailer.
We drove up to Rexburg the afternoon before the ride. We enjoyed a pre-ride dinner with everyone and a few friends.
We arrived in Montpelier at 5pm and our chase driver had our room AC turned on and dinner plans made. We enjoyed some tasty Mexican, relaxed in the hotel pool, and turned in early. We had a 7am departure time, and I need my beauty rest.
Day two started cold! It dipped to 29 degrees at one point. As we headed out of Montpelier, we skirted the east side of Bear Lake before going up and over into a valley that led us to Sage Creek Junction. We continued winding through dirt roads into Randolph, Woodruff, Bear River, and eventually into Evanston.
From Evanston we continued south to the 2-corner monument (Utah & Wyoming), or as I call it, “the inn-nee corner,” before heading through the mountains and dropping onto Mirror Lake Highway. We had quite a bit of pavement, but with views as amazing as what you get along Mirror Lake Highway, who cares about riding the pavement for a few miles?
We passed through Soapstone Basin and eventually down past Timber Lakes and into Heber. As we drove into Heber, we passed the ground breaking ceremonies for the Heber Valley temple, which was a nice surprise.
After a quick refuel at Maverick, we marched on to Midway and into the mountains and American Fork Canyon. We arrived into Highland with plenty of daylight remaining (although it was hard to see anything with the amount of dust and traffic in AF Canyon!). We covered over 300 miles today and average around 34 mph.
Overall, I thought this ride was an enjoyable cruise. There isn’t anything too rough (a bit through the Uintahs), and we had plenty of fast gravel road cruising. The machines hummed along perfectly. It was a great time of year to do it – we saw the potato harvests of Idaho (side note: “Spudnik” is the worlds best company name) and the tail-end of the fall colors of the Uintahs.
If you’re interested in doing a similar route, drop me a line and I’m happy to offer any insights. There’s quite a few variations you could do. For example, I’ve seen a lot of people ride on the west side of Bear Lake and then north, closer to Soda Springs. That’s certainly an option. There’s also a lot of private property along this route, so it makes navigating the area a little problematic (i.e. you can’t always trust the trails shown on OnX).
