The Beauty of Central Idaho in the Fall

Our latest sibling assignment posed to us by Inland Empire Girl is this:

As autumn approaches think of a perfect fall day you have experienced. Using words and pictures recapture that day.

For this assignment, I'm going to focus on, not only a day, but a perfect fall three day trip PKR and I took about 10 years ago.

I think it was one of those times where life was getting a bit overwhelming, and we decided it was time to get away by ourselves for a few days. It was in October, I believe, and we had relatives who could take care of the girls, so we headed toward unchartered territory...central Idaho.

The first night, on Thursday, we drove to Gooding, Idaho, a small town about 1 1/2 hours from Meridian. You take Interstate 84 east to Bliss, then go east on US26/US30 to Gooding. We stayed in a little home owned motel, and it was delightful.

Our theme for the trip was, "let's go wherever the road takes us". We made not plans, no reservations, no anything. If something looked interesting, we explored it.

Waking up Friday morning, we started on our journey. One sign we saw said "Little City of Rocks" so we turned down the road and visited an area with strange rock formations.

Another road we went down provided us with an up close and personal view of a family of bighorn sheep.

We eventually ended up in Challis, Idaho for the night. There was one important thing I remembered about Challis, Idaho. Challis got a bit of a shake up on October 28, 1983 when the Challis area was the epicenter for a 7.3 magnitude earthquake, which raised Mt. Borah 7 feet higher. I was a student at the University of Idaho at the time, and I still remember being in bed on the top bunk on the sleeping porch at the Tri-Delt house, and one of my sorority sisters, who was from California and familiar with these things, comes running onto the porch yelling, "It's an earthquake, everyone get out!!"

I remember when it began, I was half dreaming, thinking there were people outside the sorority building trying to move it back and forth.

PKR, who was across campus in Upham Hall, one of the men's dorms, slept through all the excitement. With his bed moving back and forth, and banging up against the wall, he just thought someone was knocking on his door. It was too early to get up, so he just put the pillow over his head, and fell back to sleep.

So, now we were in a motel room in Challis. As I recall, it was a bit of a dive, and it seemed like there were big cracks in the walls, almost as if they were cracked during the earthquake, but never quite repaired correctly.

When we left Challis, we traveled to Mt. Borah, and saw for ourselves how the highest peak in Idaho actually gained 7 more feet because of the earthquake. It was very interesting.

Our last night was spent in Salmon, Idaho. What a beautiful town in the middle of nowhere. I remember we traveled along the north fork of the Salmon River to Shoup. As I recall we picked up some kid who had been fishing and needed a ride back to town.

I also remember driving through Mackay. I always wondered about this town, because my friend TM worked there one summer for the CCC. We also visited some old mining areas around Salmon, and enjoyed beautiful weather, fall foilage, and a relaxing time.

I remember one of the other fun things we did on that trip was go to the Boise Coop, a grocery store in Boise that had fabulous wine and cheese, and we purchased many different kinds of cheeses to eat on our trip, and some wonderful bread.

One particular type of cheese we purchased was called Manchego. We actually bought two kinds; one was about 3 years old, and the other kind was 25 years old. Manchego is a sheep's milk cheese made in the La Mancha region of Spain.

I know I have pictures from this trip, and, if I can find them, I will add them to this post.

On the drive home, we traveled up through the Sawtooth Mountains, through Stanley, to Lowman, and into Garden Valley, then on toward Meridian. I remember stopping at the natural hot springs along the river, and enjoying a dip. We decided not to stop at the same hot springs where the naked men were enjoying their dip in the water. I remember on the road around Lowman there were signs telling the story of a forest fire that went through there. It was fascinating reading about the fire.

This trip was a definate highlight in my life. It was so enjoyable traveling alone with PKR, having no plans or agenda, and enjoying the beauty of Idaho during my favorite time of the year, fall.

I'll keep look for those pictures, and hopefully add some soon.