As we head south on day two of the ride, we arrive at the internationally famous resort community of Sun Valley.  Tourists from around the world enjoy its skiing, hiking, ice-skating, trail riding, tennis, and more.  Sun Valley was the first destination winter resort to be built in the United States.

The world's first chairlifts were installed on the Sun Valley’s Proctor and Dollar Mountains in the fall of 1936.  Ernest Hemingway completed For Whom the Bell Tolls (which many consider his greatest novel) while staying in suite 206 of the Lodge in the fall of 1939.  Averell Harriman had invited Hemingway and other celebrities, primarily from Hollywood, to the resort to help promote it.  Gary Cooper was a frequent visitor and hunting/fishing partner, as was Clark Gable.  Hemingway was a part-time resident over the next twenty years, eventually relocating to Ketchum (Papa and his fourth wife are buried in the Ketchum Cemetery).  The Hemingway Memorial, dedicated in1966, is just off Trail Creek Road, about a mile northeast of the Sun Valley Lodge.

Proceeding east from Sun Valley, we stop briefly at the “Craters of the Moon” National Monument, which was proclaimed on May 2, 1924 by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge to "preserve the unusual and weird volcanic formations”. The monument is a 715,000-acre geologic wonderland.  Its central feature is the Great Rift, a 62-mile long crack in the earth's crust.  The Great Rift is the source of a remarkably preserved volcanic landscape with an array of exceptional features.  Craters, cinder coves, lava tubes, deep cracks, and vast lava field’s form a strangely beautiful volcanic sea on central Idaho's Snake River Plain.  After a full day on the motorcycles, we arrive at Swan Valley, located in eastern Idaho.  This will be our layover destination for the second night of the ride.