Idyllic Idaho!

US95 near Council, Idaho, June 3, 2010

We weren't sure how far we were going to get on our drizzly Sunday, May 30th, leaving Yellowstone. You'll remember we had had snow the day before, and even though the roads were clear, it remained overcast and intermittently rainy. Our next stop was Sun Valley, Idaho, and we thought that was probably a little bit too far a drive to go the entire way from Fishing Bridge and Old Faithful in Yellowstone, all the way to Sun Valley.

We angled southwest from West Yellowstone, WY, just outside the park, and shortly were heading down US 20 to Idaho Falls.

We continued to see snow capped mountains and began our realization about how many mountains/mountain ranges there are in Idaho. It's all mountains .... with some beautiful valleys inbetween!

Highway 20 turned west at Idaho Falls, and we followed it to Arco. There was a really nice KOA there, and we had a fun experience when we checked in. I walked into the office, and there was this really efficient young person who checked us in. She asked all the usual questions, and even gave me a restaurant recommendation. But I couldn't help but ask her how old she was, as she did look so young (even though I know it's against the law to ask an employee's age!). Ciera was 11! Her mom was watching a moving in the adjacent room, and so was nearby. Liz soon got acquainted with her, and they went swimming that evening, and then watched a Harry Potter movie together. It was a great piece of luck to run into such a nice girl that evening. Liz was invited and returned the next morning for a little more play time, and we pulled away about 10 a.m.

Arco is the site of the first commercial use of atomic power in the United States. It is just west of Atomic City and the Idaho National Laboratory. On December 20, 1951, the Experimental Breeder Reactor #1 became the first site in the country to generate a usable amount of electricity.

Monday, May 31st was Memorial Day. Just past Arco is Craters of the Moon National Monument. Early in the 20th century geologists noted this place that "looked like the surface of the moon as seen through a telescope." These lava flows that look like meteors have hit are actually the result of volcanic eruption, but not a specific volcano. They are the result of the "Great Rift" ... long fissures across the Snake River Plain. It looks like just acres and acres of lava.

Craters of the Moon National Monument

We continued southwest on US 20 to Carey, continued to Picabo and then took a little diagonal to Idaho 75 and Hailey, Ketchum and Sun Valley. Picabo was a quaint little spot. As we would see repeatedly, there are MANY small airstrips in MANY remote places in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. The distances are so far between that people really use small planes to get around, and they land in any little valley they can find. This little plane landed as we were looking around the general store in Picabo.

Gary performed an amazing manipulation of our rig at Picabo. He had turned into the side road of the General Store, and then we saw that the space behind the store was the air strip ....not a place where we could turn around. So he did what I have been telling people is impossible ..... he backed up the 40 foot motorhome with the car attached. I imagine he backed the whole thing up at least 50 feet, and then slowly was able to turn through an opening between the building and the gas pump, and make his way out to the road going west. It was amazing .... he definitely gets the Expert Motorhome Driver Award in my book!

About 1:30 pm we pulled into Juli and Barry Miller's street. Juli (Ling) has been a good friend since college. We were English majors together at La Sierra College/Loma Linda University and she is a tremendous writer. She has worked in marketing and public relations both for the health care and hospitality industries, and now consults from their home in Sun Valley. Barry is retired from a very successful career in the insurance industry, but he still hikes every day with their dogs ... 2 pudelpointers (a German hunting breed) and a springer spaniel. Juli and Barry are tremendous outdoors people, and hike and fly fish and bike and ski, and ... .... regularly. She is also a pilot, and takes advantage of all those fun and exciting mountain airstrips. They also have a home just south of Livingston, MT (north of Yellowstone's north entrance), so they can be wherever the outdoor action is.

We had a great chance to visit in the afternoon, and then enjoyed a scrumptious dinner Juli made of chicken thighs and wild rice.

I was really excited to see Sun Valley on Tuesday, June 1st. I've only visited Sun Valley a couple of times in the summer, but for probably 6 or more years, my parents, my brother Jim and I (along with probably 100+ family acquaintances from the Glendale, California, physician community of the 1960's) would do Christmas in Sun Valley. We would typically stay at the Challenger Inn (now called the Sun Valley Inn), and our Christmas gift would be the ski vacation. While our parents didn't ski, Jim and I learned to ski in Sun Valley, and I would always hold it as my favorite skiing venue.

Juli graciously drove us around, and we saw everything. After seeing some beautiful homes driving into town, she drove us to Dollar Mountain. This is where I learned to ski. The beautiful lodge had been built since I was there ... we just had a little warming hut.

Here is a picture of Half Dollar, where we had out first lessons and learned to ski.

Then you graduate to Dollar .... a little higher and a little steeper. These days, we saw, they have developed a Quarter Dollar .... a little bunny hill next to Dollar. It was such a manageable first place to skin .... minimally scary!

Then we drove a little ways down the road and saw the first chairlift in the United States.

Sun Valley, of course, was also a home of Ernest Hemingway. He loved the mountains, and particularly the fishing. There was a lovely monument to him .... spanning one of his favorite fly fishing spots.

As we headed into town, we saw Bald (I always called it Baldy) Mountain through the clouds. This was where we graduated to when we started being able to take on more challenging slopes.

We parked next to the Sun Valley Lodge where Gary took a picture of Juli, Liz and me. We walked into that familiar lobby which looks out over the ice skating rink. You have to be a lifelong fan of figure skating to know this, but ......... Sonja Henie skated here! Now, current (and not so current) stars like Evan Lysacek and Brian Boitano skate there now.

When you walk in the lobby, you can look straight through and see the ice rink, which is actually covered this time of year to prevent the sun from melting it! To the right of the lobby are lovely black and white portraits of famous visitors .... it really brought back memories seeing the picture of Jackie Kennedy with Caroline and John, as we saw them frequently in the dining room that Christmas of 1965.

After we looked around the skating rink, and the beautiful Sun Valley Pavilion, we made our way over to the Inn .... formerly the Challenger Inn. Here are Liz and Gary outside it. It still has the Austrian chalet feel. Stein Erickson, the famous Austrian skier, was the head of the ski school during the years we visited in my youth.

Next we walked by the Opera House. It was here that our group would gather for church during the holiday

week-ends back in the '60s.

We finished our trip down memory lane by a drive out to the base of Bald(y) Mountain where I could see the bottom of my favorite, River Run. This was a long, wide, non-mogol run where you could just cruise down the hill, even in the afternoon when you were tired. I remember feeling like I was floating down.

That evening we all went out to dinner at a Sun Valley Italian restaurant ..... Rico's. It was a wonderful day, even in the drizzle.

Our Sun Valley visit had been so special .... like that beautiful sun seal that is its logo!

I've always loved this logo of Sun Valley!

We packed up the next morning, Wednesday, June 2, and wheeled Buster around the Miller's cul-de-sac

and set off for the Sawtooth's, through Stanley and Banner Summit. In the pictures below you can see the sawtooth effect that we saw looking toward the mountains from Buster's window,

and we traveled along one of the many fabulous fishing streams spotted through our dappled window.

Juli and Barry had suggested we take a look at Redfish Lake. It was just as pretty as they said .... even in the rain. We ate breakfast at the lodge ... a traditional eggs and bacon affair, in a beautiful log lodge. It's been the site of lots of fun for decades.

The trip over the Sawtooth's originally started to the north, but then we almost did a U-turn beyond Stanley and headed south west on Idaho 21. At Lowman, we took a western cut-off to the west and hooked into Idaho 55 going north again toward McCall. Throughout the day we kept traveling along streams and valleys, all seeming to be perfect fishing venues.

It was fun to drive through the town of Donnelly (my mother's maiden name),

and then glide along the sylvan mist to our campground at Evergreen Campground. We determined that we could drive into the untended campground and deposit $5 in the slot (half price due to Gary's National Park Service Senior Pass). We dry camped, but we were just fine.

We planned to insert another day on our way to our (intermediate) ultimate destination: Moscow, Idaho, where I would visit with my dear high school and college friend, Gretchen Wissner and her husband Jim Miller. But we had gotten another tip from Juli and Barry Miller, and since the previous ones had been so good, we decided to do it. They said we should really see Hell's Canyon .... a very deep rugged canyon of the Snake River along the Idaho and Oregon border. They were right.

We headed out in Bella on Thursday, June 3. It was about a hundred mile drive through Council and Cambridge, and on to Brownlee and Oxbow dams. While we didn't have a downpour, we stayed on the drizzly side most of the day. Lizzie was happy about her blooming cactus as we started the day.

You can see one of the tributaries of the Snake River joining it with their different colored streams below.

This is the description from the AAA Tour Book: "Confined within steep, eroded black basalt walls, the surging Snake River has carved North America's deepest river gorge, measuring 7,913 feet from He Devil Mountain to Granite Creek below." Looking at the numbers, I think it is deeper than Grand Canyon, but is not as wide so doesn't appear as "grand." But it's black walls are steep and sinister, and the name ... Hell's Canyon .... seems apt. Approaching from the south, the Idaho side, didn't give us as good a view as if we had come in from the west ... the Oregon side. But it was impressive just the same.

On our way back, we saw this bald eagle.

As the afternoon wore on, the clouds thinned a bit, and in the weak sunshine we noticed how green everything was, and many beautiful wild flowers and bushes.

We made it back to Evergreen Campground, and rehooked up Bella with Buster. Then we turned around, and headed back up US 95 past McCall, Riggins, and White Bird toward Lewiston. We were very taken by the lushness and beauty of this Snake River Valley.

It was lovely to see more and more wild flowers, sometimes filling entire fields.

We then saw huge fields of solid yellow flowers/plants, which seemed too precise to be wild flowers. We learned they were commercial fields of rapeseed ..... to make canola oil.

We arrived in Moscow, at Gretchen and Jim's about 8 o'clock. Jim, a retired high school counselor, had dinner waiting: marinated grilled flank steak (from Costco ... I'm going to look for it!), asparagus and potatoes. Our favorite meal. It was so wonderful to see them again. We haven't seen Gretchen for 5 years .... at a get together we had in Southern California (at Polly's house) when Lizzie was 5 ..... and I couldn't wait to catch up!

We awakened to another drizzly day in Idaho.

Friday, June 4th, marked the beginning of a wonderful visit with Gretchen (Wissner) and Jim (Miller) and also the beginning of Liz' comprehensive tests of the 4th grade! I may have mentioned already that the State of Minnesota does not have a specific curriculum that needs to be covered in home school. You are free to teach what you want. But it does require that a comprehensive test be administered. We contracted with the State of Minnesota and they sent us the Iowa Test of Basic Schools for the 4th Grade. We picked it up with our mail in Moab, Utah, and in reading the instruction manual we learned that the test would take about 6 hours. It was suggested that the test be administered in multiple sessions, and so we set out a schedule to begin today. Gary was the proctor for the first few sessions, and they sat down for about 45 minutes to do the vocabulary and reading comprehension tests. Liz was thrilled to get that first session under her belt.

Gretchen was still teaching so we had the pleasure of going to lunch at Mikey's with Jim. Mikey's is a Greek restaurant and I had the Leapin' Lizard wrap, and Liz had the Greek Sampler. We were curious and interested to see her ordering something so adult, but she really liked it. But she didn't like it as much as the shop that was next door to Mikey's: The Tie Dye Shop. OMG! They had all things tie dye, and Liz had trouble settling on one or two things. She needed a little zip purse with a shoulder strap to keep and carry her cell phone in, so she found that. She got a woven tote, and finally, the ultimate hippie, halter maxi dress! You have to admit, she looks pretty cute in it.

First we have her in front of Gretchen and Jim's beautiful country home, and then in her "model" poses!

Gretchen was still tending to her major teaching project as a gifted education teacher.... ELI (I think it stands for Extended Learning Initiative). She has mentored 37 high school students in an independent project for a semester. They meet as a group once a week, and then she meets individually with them each week as well. Each student also has a mentor or consultant who is an expert in the topic area they have chosen. Some students built musical instruments (guitars); some made movies/videos. One girl did a huge analysis of the Harry Potter films., etc., etc. The week we were there, the students were just finishing giving their 20 minute presentations on their projects to faculty and family/parents. They all seemed to be on a high, and the portfolios Gretchen had to go through and review/grade were simply amazing.

She decided on teaching after we were through college (I think she was a history major), but now has been doing it at least 30 years, and she is still so PASSIONATE about it. It's contagious. In addition to ELI, she coaches Future Problem Solving for grade schoolers, and was planning to take them to La Crosse, WI, for the national competition the next week.

Jim has taken on the project of painting their house this summer, so the siding was laid out in the garage. Fortunately they both were able to take a break for dinner and we went to Red Bento, a delicious Japanese restaurant in downtown Moscow. Gary and Liz had teriyaki chicken and steak, along with sushi, and I had some delicious Japanese noodles. It was a beautiful spring evening, and Red Benton was hoppin' in Moscow.

On Saturday, June 5, Gretchen, Liz and I went to the Moscow Farmer's Market. Being a teacher in Moscow for 25 or so years, Gretchen knows everybody! She is obviously an adored teacher in town, and it was so fun to see how many people and former students were so happy to see her and visit a minute. We stopped at the Co-Op, and then headed home for a delicious lunch of grilled jarlsburg and gruyere cheese sandwiches while enjoying some beautiful sunshine on their lovely garden deck.

That afternoon, Gretchen and Jim were invited to attend a retirement party for two of their teacher colleagues, so we were on our own. We ended up getting some take out Mexican food and having a quiet evening at their home .... just the three of us.

Sunday, June 6 was our departure day. But first we wanted to show Buster off a little bit more to Gretchen and Jim, but ..... they brought the breakfast! Gretchen put together a gorgeous fruit plate served on her Spode, delicious sour dough banana bread baked from scratch and some danish pastries. She brought out coffee in her lovely cups and it was just so nice. What a treat to be served "in your own home!"

It was sad for us to think about saying "good-bye" to our good friends .... Gretchen is truly a soul mate, and when I spend time with her, it seems the years we've been apart just melt away. But we were happy to hear they are thinking of joining the ranks of we "RVers!" They are looking at 5th Wheels, and maybe sometime we will be able to meet in a campground somewhere. It's quite something for two Glendale girls like us, growing up just on the fringes of "The Valley", but we've gone on down the road to Camping World!

About 1 pm we headed north about 100 miles to Coeur d'Alene. My parents had traveled through Coeur d'Alene in about 1963, and I remember my mother saying it was one of the most beautiful places in the country. I wanted to see it, and was even more motivated when I learned that my cousin, Dr. Jim Smith and his wife Julie had retired there.

We arranged to meet in the later afternoon. Gary and I were happy to arrive safe and sound. While traveling up US 95, we encountered some road work resulting in an abrupt drop off on the right shoulder. Going around a little curve, the motorhome's wheel slipped off this shoulder and caused a little instability and fishtailing of the car. Gary really had to maintain his cool and not over-correct to go left and potentially into the lane of oncoming traffic .... and there was on-coming traffic coming. We were happy he got it under control and we didn't have any significant damage. We did notice a little scrape on the car, and believe it must have fishtailed into the guardrail, and dinged the car.

We arrived at the RV park about 4 pm, and called Jim and Julie. I don't think I've seen them for over 40 years ... probably not since I was a teen-ager, and before my father died in 1968. Jim is 72, and a retired periodontist. He had some health problems at mid-career, and had to quit doing long periodontal surgeries. So he taught at Loma Linda University Dental School for a while, and then entered the California Corrections System, and worked in two or three prisons as a dentist for the last 10 years, just retiring last year. It was interesting to hear the story behind that and to catch up on their lives.

Jim is the son of my father's sister, Irma Abbott Smith (deceased). It was so serendipitous that we were able to be in touch. I have more recently been in touch with his older brother, Bob. But I hadn't talked with Bob, a physician in San Diego, for over 6 or 7 years, and his phone number was no longer correct. While visiting Polly in Southern California I had tried to get a working number, and didn't have any luck. But then, unbelievably, Bob got in touch with me! While we were in Las Vegas, I received an EMail message from my office that Bob had called and wanted me to call him back. He asked me to see a patient when I returned to Rochester, which I was happy to do. But in the meantime, I was able to get reconnected with Jim and Julie.

We had a lovely evening and dinner at Cedars Floating Restaurant ... they seem to be doing very well.

We did a little more exploring of Coeur d'Alene the next morning, Monday, June 7, and could see the very scenic downtown set on Lake Coeur d'Alene.

There was a darling moose statue down by the lake side.

After a leisurely morning, we found Interstate 90 and started our trip home .... to the east ... in earnest.

Whenever we find ourselves on I90, it feels like we're really on the way home, as I90 goes right by Rochester. But we still had a couple of detours ..... to The Last Best Place .... and 5 additional states to get our total of 48.

We're not done yet!

Julie, Gary and Liz