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:

Hey! Who keeps moving the sun??

Arco, Idaho (08-30-17)

Arco is a very small town, with not one, but two claims to fame!

Craters of the Moon National Monument

I really had no idea what to expect at Craters of the Moon, although I suppose that, having never really given it any thought, I expected a crater.

Well, there are lots of craters. This area is a Great Rift- a series of fissures along which a line of volcanoes erupted. (you can see two of them in this picture).

The oldest eruption was about 15,000 years ago and the latest, about 2000 years ago.  They sure left behind a lot of lava!

Along the 7 mile scenic drive, there are lots of features to look at, such as small cones and lava fields. This is Spatter Cone.  Nearby is Snow Cone. You can look down into Snow cone and see…snow.

That’s amazing because as we are walking these short trails, the temperature topped out at 97*.

By the time we had walked to the top of Inferno Cone, we decided it was too hot to do everything in one day, as we had planned, so we extended our stay by one day. To get a perspective on size, there are people in this picture.

It was actually pretty at the top and worth the perspiring to get up there.

We walked the two mile trail to “Tree Molds”.  These were trees that were incinerated when the lava flow came through, and a mold of the tree was left behind. The tree on the left was standing upright, and the tree on the right was laying on the ground.  You can see the outline of the bark and also the indentations where the branches were.
























The following morning we were up and ready to some exploring.

There are several lava tubes that you can walk into. The largest one has an opening at both ends, so its basically a tunnel.

In some areas, the roof had caved in, allowing more light in, but also making the walk a little more challenging.


















This was the “exit” at the end of this particular tube.

EBR-1

Done with the National Monument, after lunch we headed over to EBR-1, or Experimental Breeder Reactor 1, where we got a guided tour of the facility.



After World War II, the U.S. government wanted to find out if atomic energy could be used for peaceful, commercial purposes.

Instead of exploding,  the blend of power in a breeder reactor is designed to supply steady power over a long period of time, instead of a split second, like a bomb.





I got quite the education on nuclear power but I actually found it very interesting, and asked a bunch of questions.



Arco is where this breeder reactor was built, and in fact, on December 20, 1951, 4 light bulbs were successfully lit, using power from the reactor.  The following day, all of the power for the building was supplied by the reactor.


The experiment was a success.







Taking things one step further, nearby Borax III nuclear reactor successfully powered the city of Arco, for just one hour ( it was an experiment).  So, Arco became the first town to be completely  run by nuclear power.

A Plethora of History (08-28-17)

After leaving Lava Hot Springs, our genealogy trail led us to the Idaho Falls area. In addition to exploring, we were on the hunt for any information about Paul’s family.



We alternated our visits to cemeteries with visits to museums and historical societies.

Fun With Flags

Among the museums we visited was the Museum of Idaho.  We mistakenly assumed this would have a lot of information about the state and it’s history.

It did have one area that focused on the state, where we learned that on June 14, 1777, it was decided that our country needed a flag. It took years to agree upon a basic design, and soon thereafter, that design was made obsolete by the addition of more states into the union.

In 1817 they decided that it was not practical to keep adding a stripe and a star for every state, so the decision was made to leave the number of stripes at 13, and just add stars. It was still a bit of a mess because it wasn’t until 1912 that the size, shape and arrangement of the stars was standardized.


The rest of the museum was dedicated to revolving exhibits.  Right now, it’s all about space. When I heard that I could ride a space bicycle for $1, I said “sign me up”.

Once I was strapped in, the machine started spinning, simulating gravity. To me, it felt like being on an amusement park ride, and not in a good way.  After pedaling for about 30 seconds, I had had enough. 

Paul and I never looked so good!

Paul’s great grandfather used to have a farm in Dubois, so we headed that way to see what we could find out about it.  Being a tiny town, the historical society building is only open a few hours a day.  While we waited, we took the Scenic Byway.

It wasn’t all that scenic.  We did see some old farm relics, but mostly we watched the smoke from one of the nearby wildfires.

We also drove through an active fire area but I didn’t get a decent picture.  The wildfires are tough this year and might interfere with our plans for visiting Oregon.

Our patience paid off,  and back at the historical society, the girl who worked there said that yes, she did know some Lairds in the area, in fact, Ellen Laird had just been there a few minutes ago. She was nice enough to call her, and even though it was her birthday, Ellen came to chat with us.

An hour later, after comparing notes about the family, she called her daughter Brenda, and we spent an hour or so with her before they took us out to the family cemetery.

Before leaving the area, we had to check out the Potato Museum. They actually have a clever phone/camera stand in front of the museum so you can take a decent selfie.

I never actually thought about what potatoes look like in the ground, so I learned something right away.

I also found out that almost all Idaho potatoes are the Russet Burbank variety, and they all originally came from a single seed that Luthor Burbank found growing in a garden in New England in the 1800s.

Mr. Potato Head has had a long history, and is still in production.  There was a kids area where you could put one together. The original Mr. Potato Head kit contained just the push pins and kids used a real potato as the body, but with so many complaints of rotting potatoes, they decided to supply the plastic body too.

Having been to many, many, museums, I try to find something that’s different or unusual that might be of interest to me. At the Bannock County Museum, one of the interesting displays was a case full of police evidence. Kinda strange.

I always get nostalgic when I see historic Gillette products.  My dad retired from Gillette after about 40 years.