Sawtooth Mountains (09-06-17)

Full Time or Long Time RVers understand that holiday weekends can present a bit of a challenge. 



Paul and I aren’t big on making reservations, so we needed to find a place to go for Labor Day weekend. We decided to pretty much hide in the woods. You can barely see our rig, nestled in the trees.

We were on Federal land, where the camping is dispersed and free. We had pre-selected a few potential spots on Google maps and ended up with a pretty good one. Our only real issue is that our cell phone service and internet were practically nonexistent.

With all the wildfires, there was also a ban on campfires so that was disappointing too. 

Our game plan was pretty simple.  Hang out, and hike.  The hike I was looking forward to most was the one to Sawtooth Lake.  It’s 10 miles round trip, with 1700 ft of elevation gain.

Rather than building up to it by hiking shorter trails first, we decided to go for the gusto and set out the next morning.

To my intense chagrin, I realized almost right away that I had forgotten my camera- so all the pictures from this hike were taken with my phone.  At least it has a decent camera too.



It wasn’t long before the views were amazing! The first lake we came to was Alpine Lake.
The higher we went, the more challenging the trail was to navigate.

I was surprised to see so much snow along the way, since the air temperature was in the high 80s.

We topped out at almost 9000 ft, so there were more times than I could count that I had to stop and catch my breath.

But it was worth it to keep going!

The lake was gorgeous!

Taking a break, we took off our shoes and cooled off in the water a bit.  Other people went swimming, and I half wish I had brought a suit.

Once we had refreshed ourselves, we were sort of ready for the trek back down the mountain.

Everywhere we looked, the views were amazing, and we both agreed it was one of our favorite hikes.


By the time we made it down, we were very glad we didn’t have even another half mile to go.  We were both done in. 

It was also late enough in the day that we decided to stop in one of the small towns and grab dinner on the way back, so we wouldn’t have to cook.




We recovered pretty well by the next day, although we weren’t interested in any hiking.  That worked out perfect, actually.

The nearby town of Ketchum was celebrating Wagon Days.

We arrived in town in time explore, and have lunch before the yearly parade. This is one of the longest parades in the country that includes nothing motorized.









There were a wide variety of non-motorized participants to see!












Apparently anything goes, as long as it has no motor!





























And for the finale, they asked the crowd to be quiet…..

And then came the 6 full sized wagons…..

Being pulled by a full, traditional, 20 mule team.  It was really cool to see- I couldn’t even fit it all into one picture.

This type of parade called for a unique clean up crew.  These guys seemed to be having quite a good time, and got some cheers from the crowd.

Afterwards we hung around a while at the street party, which included live music, more food, and cheap drinks.  Fun time!




We did do some other hiking before we left the area- nothing as memorable as Sawtooth Lake, but the hike to Titus Lake was kind of nice, at about 4 miles and 600 ft of elevation gain.







As soon as Labor Day was over, we were more than ready to get back in the land of signal. We needed to do some refiguring of our plans.

I mentioned wildfires- the picture on the left is what the area looked like when we arrived, and the picture on the right is what it looked like when we left. More on that in the next post.

And now, a word from our sponsor:

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