We invite the neighbor girls to join us for a hike atop America’s tallest sand dune. We hope to hit the sweet spot between spring mosquitoes and the summer swelter. Oh, and to avoid wind. Wind is a killer on the dune.
Somehow it’s me and four ladies camping high in the Idaho mountains, two of them for the first time.
Against prevailing wisdom, we set a course for a ridge high above Stanley to sleep then sit in observation of the celestial mating.
Four guys in a Jeep drove up a hill and nothing got broke.
Wherein we finally demonstrate for Alexis that Boise is French and that not all of my shortcuts are … oh, wait, nevermind.
More trips with Europeans: Nick from Poland joins us for an exciting adventure to one of Idaho’s frontier towns.
We head to the hills just outside of town for a little walk through murder, political intrigue and free gold along Five Mile Creek.
We head out from home on foot to survey flooding that, like our winter snow, is the highest in many years.
The year’s first stretch of sunshine invites us to spend a day exploring terrain popular a century ago and millennia ago in an unassuming desert canyon.
We convince a young frenchman that sub-zero is an appropriate temperature for an Idaho outing.
Wherein I hike with young ladies among swoopdongles and bibbelty bobs amidst the litterbox smell of blue-berried junipers.
Brenna and I spend a sunny spring afternoon bicycling Boise’s Greenbelt along the river through six parks with a pitstop at Joe’s Crabshack to grease the wheels.
Laura finds she won’t have time to prepare for her semester in Japan and also visit us for Christmas so we make a quick decision to drive up for the weekend to see and help her pack.
Brilliant but cool autumn days beckon us south to explore again the Lake Idaho seabed, hoping for treasures both emotional and material.
This warm and dry spring inspires a hot dog and marshmallow excursion to the Snake River where kids have played on a curious collection of round boulders for a thousand years.
Working on pictures of a previous Hulls Gulch walk brought it to mind. It’s been a few years since we visited. A beautiful, sunny weekend beckons.
It was down to the wire whether our Thanksgiving with Heather, Eric and kids could be at their cabin in Atlanta, Idaho. Record breaking November snowfall left the sixty mile mountain dirt road impassable. But a quick melt has things back on track. Or so it seems.
We must make the most of our favorite season, walks and rides, fast and furious, before the last leaf falls. We park in Bown Crossing near Brenna’s school for an evening walk along the river before sitting to dinner and perhaps a treat.
Something we’ve said we’d do for a while now, we load the kids up to visit Silver City then camp somewhere in the hills above. It was near freezing when I camped with my brothers recently but it seems warmer now. I hope so.
Keeping to the recent pattern, we drive south with the kids to camp at a place in the Owyhees I reconnoitered by motorcycle, stopping along the way to see the Owyhee Museum in Murphy.
After running through some options to break the television-watching rain routine, we settle on the forty-five minute drive to Jump Creek Falls, what some call a “locals’” attraction because of unclear, zig-zag access through private pastures and occasional use by teen revelers.
Our eldest child Laura in town on holiday break from school at Washington State University seems a good reason to soak in our favorite hot spring, Kirkham, especially since Laura has never been there.
Jess and I with our two youngest travel to the southern edge of prehistoric Lake Idaho for a sunny walk around one of the world’s more unique environments.
Jessica, Hunter, Brenna and I head to Boulder Basin north of Ketchum, Idaho, to spend the night at 9,700 feet among the tailings and crumbling log cabins abandoned some sixty years since metals were last dug and dissolved from the high rock arena.
Usually obscured by layers of rock and recollection, there are places where the history of land and people unfolds to reveal our own small place in the twining and termless chains of causality.
With the two youngest, a mermaid and some Pringles, we head over the mountains hoping the Kirkham Hot Springs are just that — hot — in spite of the deep freeze that has settled over Idaho. We test some extremes of hot and cold.
While my brother Jesse and Jessica’s sister Amanda are visiting for Christmas, the boys go for some adventure in snow on lava.
Heather and Eric invite us up to the cabin in Atlanta, Idaho we’ve heard so much about while under construction these past many months. We are excited to see it and spend Thanksgiving together.
Snow prevents us from reaching the Trinity lakes so we set up for a night along the cold creek below the lookout.
Having scouted it by motorcycle with my brother Joel, we decided our first Jeep camping trip would be near the historic Birch Creek homesteads along the Owyhee River.
A stretch of warm days give me hope we can take our new Jeep out for its first foray into the foothills above Boise.
We stopped here last fall after motorcycling up for an evening at the Sourdough Lodge. We knew the kids would love it. The tiny car, not so much..
After seeing it alone while motorcycling, I knew the rest of the family would be excited to explore the peculiar landscape of Jordan Craters, made stranger by a skiff of snow.
My mom and daughter joined me for an attempted hike around America's tallest free standing sand dune.
Brenna visited Upper Hulls Gulch when she was three days old. She seemed to like it. It seems just the thing to get her and all of us out of the house amidst grey winter days.
Warm and partly sunny January weather beckons us outdoors to traipse among the sticks and leaves along the river near our house.
Hunter and I having scouted it first, the ladies decide to join us for another foray into the dark and dusty Kuna Cave.
I have noticed Swan Falls dam several times during flight lessons, just minutes from the airport, and have been wanting to drive down to check it out. A sunny spring day seemed a good time to finally explore.
We have hit Shoshone Falls a couple times and the Indian Ice Cave so this Twin Falls mid-trip adventure, to beat the desert drive doldrums, is Malad Gorge.
A little look-see on the internet suggests we might break the monotony of four Interstate 84 hours with a stop at a famous ice cave not far off the freeway. I’m not sure what an ice cave is but it sounds intriguing.