Lewiston, Idaho. You drive in on a summer day from the high desert plateau. It's so hot you see the wavy lines steaming up from the highway. The road begins to snake down, switchbacking down a cliff overlooking the Snake River, with Lewiston hugging its banks. A huge factory takes up half the town, with giant slab-like rectangular buildings, a huge smokestack that's spewing white billowing smoke. You have to use a lower gear to ease down the long steep sloping switchbacks. It's so steep they've put in escape routes for trucks in case they burn up their brakes. These escape routes are steep upward slopes of deep gravel off on the shoulder where a truck can go if it's loosing control. Lewiston looks brown, shimmering brown in the hazy heat, the river also looks brown, and you can see ocean going ships docked, ready to pick up lumber to haul to Asia. Finally we reach the bottom of the canyon. We're hot. It's been a long day. We have a reservation in Lewiston for the night. Sure enough, we cross the river into town, and find our way to the hotel we picked from the AAA book because they took dogs. It's along the main drag in Lewiston. A two story box with a drive through canopy behind. Just next to the railroad tracks, and on the other side of that is the road that skirts the levy. Then there's the levy, and then the river. Parked outside of the hotel are several trailers for hauling rafts for running the river, which apparently is one of the main tourist gigs here…
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