Coeur d’Alenes, ID - Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes (8/19 - 8/29/24)

Now we get back to riding our bikes on HoF Rail Trails. This time we will ride the famous Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes and Hiawatha Trails. I will review the Hiawatha in a separate post.

The Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes is a fully-paved trail that traverses 73 miles across beautiful parts of Idaho. We rode about a total 150 miles on this trail. The trail starts in Plummer on the west side and flows downhill for several miles and then follows lakeside for several more.

We stayed at the CDA River RV, Riverfront Campground that is centrally located to this trail and right on the Coeur d’Alenes River. The trail passes right through the campground so we were able to ride from the campsite on two days.

Once you came down the mountain from Plummer, you crossed the lake from west to east and rode the coast of the lake for several miles north.

Behind us is a string of lakeside riding until we meet up with the Coeur d’Alenes River.

More lake views as we ride north.

Most of the trail runs along the Coeur d’Alenes River. On the east side, the trail follows the only mountain pass going east and is joined with I-90 and the railroad to share the mostly level, but uphill climb to the end town Mullan.

Although is does pass through a few small towns, most of it is very rural and has very few road crossings. The towns (Harrison, Cataldo, Kellogg, and Wallace) did have restaurants and bars which we visited quite a few times.

The scenery never got old and views of clear waters were abundant.

Several times we ran into moose sightings along with other wildlife.

This fully-paved trail is in excellent condition.

Here the river widens and slows the pace.

This cow moose was enjoying tree leaves right off the trail. She did not seem concerned with the bike riders, but I was told by someone riding by that one of them chased them down the trail just the day before.

The further east you go, the more mountainous the trail becomes.

On August 19, there was a super blue moon, which is a rare combination of a supermoon and a blue moon. I took this picture with my Canon zoom lens.

We took a day off riding to take in some history lessons. This time we visited the Coeur d’Alene’s Old Mission State Park near the town of Cataldo that was near our campground.

After finishing our HoF rides we took in some extra credit by going to Spokane, WA and rode the Centennial Trail that rides along the Spokane River.

On our way to Yellowstone, we stayed at a Harvest Host near Garrison, MT for the night. Nothing here but a river and quiet. This place did have electrical hookups.