My Secchi Disk

The third night was the first one we spent actually in the van. This is something Amy's done before, but was a bit strange for me. Especially because we were in a true ghost town in the middle of the mountains. I heard a pack of coyotes during the night, and a dog somehow discovered us and barked a lot, but otherwise we were fine.

Morning...

We went to see the drege in the mining town of Sumpter and had breakfast in a vacant lot along the main street, where deer grazed and wandered between the SUVs.

The landscape at the eastern edge of Oregon, along 84, was less striking than route 26, but still was the kind of place you just wanted to be hiking across.

We made it through Nampa, Idaho... We didn't actually stop there, so I shouldn't badmouth it, but it was the worst smell we encountered on the trip by far.

We found Boise well-sprinkled, with nice fluorescent-green gated communities scattered through the desert.

We were planning on tubing down the Boise River, an extremely popular local pastime, but it seemed too hot for it (and cost money... we came up with the idea of "hitchhiking" by the side of the river too late), so we found ourselves a great location (i.e. free parking spot) by the greenbelt and made ourselves at home. You really couldn't ask for a better place to stay. There were park bathrooms to change into swimwear in, easy transportation east and west by bicycle, picnic tables for lunch, and shady trees for reading and napping.

In the evening we headed to Grove Plaza (about 3 blocks away) for Alive After Five. There were lots of people out just having a good time, even adults were running through the fountain. Great people-watching. We had some Basque food for dinner and headed off to Neurolux for a show. The Koozies, from Eugene, were awesome. Amy was wearing her antennae-like surreptitious recording equipment, which turned out to be especially fortunate when Jake sat down and explained Idaho culture to us. It was also fortunate that he offered us a place to stay on his lawn, as our plan to sleep in some bushes along the river would have turned sour as soon as Boise's beloved sprinklers turned on. We discovered this as we attempted to bike back to our van along the greenbelt and got completely soaked.

Day 5 we catch up on business using Flying M Coffee's internet connection, then head off down Idaho's Route 21 to Stanley and the Sawtooth Mountains. Turns out most Boiseans don't take 21 to get to Stanley. It's one of the most intense roads I've ever been on. I got so dizzy I had to make Amy drive the whole thing.

It was stunningly beautiful, though. The Salmon River had this many shades on aquamarine, all in one spot. (Though actually these photos are from the South Fork of the Payette River, in Lowman. Thanks to Anne for the correction.)

When we got to the Sawtooths, we found more forest fires, and ended up camping in between two of them. Our tent held up just fine with some material draped to keep the mosquitoes out.

I lay down to read about extremists, and we finally had our potatoes, cooked in the campfire. The outsides were burnt, but the insides were butter soft. Next morning I tracked down Amy using the van message board and we went mountain biking and hiking and swimming and such.

That evening Jake joined us and we visited one of the local hot springs and saw lots of shooting stars.

Our final day in Idaho, Jake took us and Scott (who we'd met in the spring) on a hike about 9,000 feet up into the Sawtooth Wilderness Area. The following six photos (and the one above) are copyright Jake Hawkes.

We left the Sawtooths at sunset for the long drive back to Portland. We saw strange fires north of the freeway and turned off to try to see what they were, because there were many of them and they seemed deliberately set, but we couldn't find them.

Our final night was spent in Baker, Oregon, just off 84. Made it back to Portland just in time for me to catch my train up to Seattle. I was in total culture shock as soon as I stepped out of the van in Portland, being around so many people again.

That's all the photos, but I'll try to write more about the experience as a whole sometime soon.