Idaho Falls, Idaho

We took a rainy day and rode into Idaho Falls for supplies, a little sight seeing and a special upgrade to our fishing outfit... a new kayak.  The new kayak is an Old Town 10 foot Vapor Angler model.  Then the sun came out and it turned into a lovely day in town.  I am sure this happened because we brought our rain gear and I wore my mud boots.

We made a selfie at the falls downtown in Idaho Falls.

First stop, State Trailer & Outdoor Supply.  Here we picked up a clear 8" sewer fitting that we have needed in a few locations where we have stayed.  It was a great supply store with lots of friendly and helpful workers.  We also found the elusive RV refrigerator condensation drain strainer plugs and a LED marker light that matches the style on Penelope.  It's the little things....

This fitting attaches directly to the trailer sewer output and then the corrugated sewer hose connects to this clear fitting.  We have a 5-inch, 45° clear fitting.  The clear is needed to see when the tank is finished emptying and when the back flush water is clean.  The straight works for certain ground slopes and sewer hook up directions.  Sometimes the 45° fitting just doesn't work/fit well.  Now we have another option, yay!

Next stop was Wild West Designs.  They sell all sorts of out west home furniture and decor.  We read that they have some incredible wood carvings so we stopped in to see for ourselves.  There sure was a lot of activity on the front porch.

Gari found herself in the middle of a bear fight!

Steve wants that big fish, the bigger bear says no way!  Grrrroarrrr!

Steve did make friends with Moose.

This smaller bear, Teddy, was made from tight wrapped barbed wire.  Pretty cool.

We stopped by the "Carved Wood Indian" by Peter Wolf Toth on the east side of Idaho Falls.  Toth was dedicated to recognizing indigenous people of North America.  He placed 73 carved statues across North America including at least one in every US state.  His statues range in height from 20 to 40 feet.  The Idaho Falls statue comes in around the middle at 27 feet.  It is carved out of Douglas Fir and was his 37th statue; it was placed in 1980.  Now Toth has expanded his horizons beyond North America and is now placing statues worldwide.  Romeo lurks in the background.

We stopped downtown at the river front (Snake River) to see the famous Idaho Falls waterfalls.  We got a great parking spot right by the waterfront and directly across the street from our new favorite Mexican Restaurant Jalisco's.  We passed this magnificent Thistle plant on the way to the water, you can see Romeo the Ram right there.

We were getting tired and hungry.  Gari found this Idaho bench made out of rock and tile work.  The sun made the stone bench very warm!

It occurred to us later that the bench look like an Idaho potato... maybe because the bench was so hot, or maybe we were just hungry.

Gari says Hi in front of the falls.  The falls go on for a couple of city blocks.  The rocks on shore are igneous or volcanic, and the rocks seen in the river appear similar,

We are guessing that the steeple in the distance is Mormon LDS.  Pretty setting for them.

Steve takes a break on the riverfront.  How about that large log stuck on the top section of the falls?!

After the falls our new favorite Mexican Restaurant was just a walk across the street from where Steve stands above at the falls. Below you can see why this is our new fav!

On the way over to the Sportsman's Warehouse to pick up the new Old Town kayak, we stopped at Eagle Rock Fountain which is in the middle of a roundabout that connects S Utah Ave with Bridgeport Dr.  This huge bronze not only has the two adult Eagles and two Eaglets in the nest, but there is also a Cougar in there.  The Cougar is hard to see in this picture, but it is below the left side Eagle in front of the water fall.

From this angle you can see the two eaglets in the nest.

This is a better angle for the Cougar.  We estimate this huge sculpture to be about 30 feet tall and 50 feet or more wide.

We left the traffic circle and went to pick up the Old Town kayak.  We hope to be using that very soon as the weather permits and we promise pictures of the new craft in a later post.

Buck's Gas & RV Park

At this writing, we have been here just over two weeks... into our two month planned stay.  We are figuring things out one day at a time as usual.  Buck's has turned out to be a fine place for us.  The owners Shawn, Courtney and Marla are very friendly and accommodating toward us. There are basic supplies available; lots of liquor, fishing supplies and bait and the typical convenient store food stuffs, no fresh produce or milk though.  Idaho Falls about 50 miles from our campsite is where we can get about anything a larger city would offer.  This makes Buck's kind of an outpost fishing camp, and the trout fishing here is very good.

Below is a shot looking back at Buck's Gas & RV Park from the NFS camping & boating area across looking the road.  We call the rocks above our "Cliff" and we can see these rocks from several miles away.  Interestingly there are some much taller mountains behind the cliff.  We are at about 5400' at Buck's.  The top of the cliff is at 6200'  Right behind, about 2 miles away, is Sheep Mountain standing at just under 9600'.

Below is Penelope and Romeo parked between the two Colorado Blue Spruce trees.  The trees give us nice afternoon shade without hanging over our trailer.  Buck's has about 25 RV sites and they have 5 small cabins for rent.  The cabins have bath facilities and Satellite TV within.  The RV park is about 2 miles from the dam of Palisades lake and the Snake River is walking distance across the road.

This is the view out our dining room window. The Snake River is right behind the tree line.  After playing our game from back on the Stockton farm of, "...we are sipping our coffee on the banks of the Snake River..."  we can say that for a fact now and not just a dream!

Guess who chilling is our front yard under the shade of the spruce tree?  Clue:  She's one Happy Camper.

We walk across the road to the NFS camping and river access area with our fishing poles most evenings as a little exercise activity and sight seeing as well.  Steve is fishing out on the main dock.  The water is still high in this picture, we had to jump over some of the water to get onto the dock to prevent getting a soaker for a week or so, since then the water has started to recede.

Gari has a Cutthroat Trout on!

We met a nice local fella on the dock, Steve Z. from St. Anthony, Idaho.  Steve Z. owned a Tree Trimming service now retired and is an excellent trout fisherman.  The first day we met him he gave us a smoked Rainbow Trout that we ate right there on the dock.  It was Delicious.  Steve Z. told us he marinated the trout for 4 hours in salt and brown sugar before smoking.  He said that put a glaze on the meat.  I noticed that he had left the skin on the fish and we had to peel the flesh from the skin.  Steve Z. said that the skin was where all the Omega-III oils were and keeping the skin on added more oil to the meat.  It was amazing and something we hope to try to do ourselves.  Below Steve Z. unhooks a Rainbow Trout.  He was talking to the fish and that made Gari smile.

Steve Z. has a fish on below; he is a pretty calm guy, and doesn't even get out of his chair unless it's a pretty big fish on his line.

This fish below got Steve Z. out of his chair!

Steve unhooks a Hybrid Cutthroat Trout x Rainbow Trout = Cutbow Trout or Hybrid... This one will come home for supper!

A nice Cutthroat Trout.  You can see the Red line under the fish's jaw; that's where the name Cutthroat came from.  Can't keep a Cutthroat, he goes back in the river.

Steve C. has a Cutthroat on off the rocky point...

Another Cutthroat ready for release.  They call the Cutthroat, Native Trout here.  The biologists are trying to reduce the Rainbow population and increase the Cutthroat population; therefore you can't keep any Cutthroat Trout, just Rainbow, Hybrids, and Brown Trout here.

Below is a nice scenic overlook on the Snake River that is just a few miles up the road from Buck's toward Idaho Falls (northwest)

We have been very pleased with our visit in Idaho so far.  Right now we both would like to return in the summers.... the winters we will leave for others!

Father's Day 2018

This week the weather is unsettled and we have been starting to get rain showers and thunder showers as of late last Friday.  So for this Father's Day we decided to take a short fishing trip. 

Turns out this new spot is hot!  That is Steve with the bigger of the two Hybrid Trout that we caught on Father's Day.  Part Rainbow, part Cutthroat Trout.

It turned out this nice spot was 1.4 miles from our camp.  Our friend Steve Z. told us about the two trees down in the Snake River.  We found the pull off and also found a few nice paths down to access the river.  This is NFS land.

Gari hops out to check out the site.  You can see the sky is unsettled.

Right away Gari spots some wild Poppies.

 Poppies, Poppies...

 Gari checks out what looks like a path down to the river

Sure enough the path leads to a nice spot on the river and Steve wastes no time in hanging the first Cutbow hybrid.  He has a night-crawler on a trout rig.

If you can see any trace of a white line on the leading edge of the Pectoral, Ventral or Anal fins it is a Hybrid or a Rainbow.  The Cutthroats have no white line and are not permitted to be kept.  We can clearly see white on the Ventral fin.

 Gari found a spot just above the two fallen trees like Steve Z. said there would be.

Gari upgraded her spot to down stream of the two fallen trees.  There is a nice little back eddy under the overhanging trees.  Maybe there is a nice Brown Trout in there...

That's what we brought home for supper.  We stopped after about 45 minutes.  The plan is to smoke these two specimens one day later this week.

Palisades Creek

First hike this summer and it was a doozey, 4.6 miles out and 4.6 miles back!  The prize at the farthest point out was Lower Palisades Lake, a picturesque mountain lake.  This trail was established and is maintained by the National Forest Service.  The trail was easy to moderate with an elevation change of only 807 feet over the 4.6 miles that we walked.  If the elevation change had been twice that we probably would not have made it to the lake.

Steve crosses the very first bridge which was right at the trail head, and he points to the magnificent creek and rock formations.

The trail is well worn and starts out on the right side of Palisades Creek.  Immediately we begin to see majestic rock canyon walls.

The creek is very high with snow melt water.  It would be no joke to fall into this c-c-coooold creek!

First opportunity to get closer to the creek, Steve carefully edges out on a big rock hanging over the creek.

Mighty rocks of Palisades Idaho

We spy a bit of snow remaining not too far from our location on the creek.

The second bridge below; there were a total of five bridges crossing the creek, including the first one at the trail head.  These other four bridges were built to last; held up by twin steel I-beams over a foot tall.  The Forest Service must have used a heavy lift helicopter to get these massive steel members all the way back here in this remote spot.

 Beautiful Palisades Creek.

Gari thinks so too, and memorializes the view.

Gari leads the way through a rock slide area along the trail.

This shot is looking almost straight up!  The rocks almost seem to be hanging over top of us on the trail in several spots.

Another magnificent cliff along the creek bed.

Trees find any spot they can to germinate and grow.

The trees in the background grow as far up the mountain as they can, but soon the terrain becomes too steep and the soil too rocky.

A bend in the creek below.

Gari checks the GPS and confirms that we are smack dab in the middle of nowhere!

A big rock in the middle of the creek, no doubt it came down from above.

Lower Palisades Lake 4.6 miles out.  The question is do we have enough steam to make it all the way back?

Standing on the bridge at the mouth of Lower Palisades Lake; keep going and you reach Upper Palisades Lake in another 2 or 3 miles.  Upper Palisades is even larger.

Steve comes to the bent tree over the trail.

An entire tiny island in the middle of the creek.

A beautiful view over one of the fine Forest Service bridges.

Where's Waldo?

A meadow of wild Daises going up the slope.

A group camping with horses passed us on our return trek.

Gari hangs out with the hanging rock.

Since we were already in the Swan Valley, Idaho vicinity we decided to stop by the Fall Creek Falls.

Fall Creek empties into the Snake River here.

Of course Curious Steve had to climb down for a closer look.

Steve notices a cave under the falls.

The cave doesn't go too far back and it looks like some plants are growing in the void.

The Snake River below.

Another wider view.