Mountain Village Resort Stanley

... about 135-140°. A cold day made for a nice soak in the springs. There were red spider mites, but weren't too bad unless you leaned against the edges of the pool.

The ford of the river was freezing (particularly so on the way back, near dusk). We saw a porcupine in the snowy road on the way back towards the highway to Lowman.

... Brian

Biking the old Pony Express Trail through the woods...

Biking with the boys around the dirt roads in the mountains...

Jogging from the park to home with Meritt

A private mountain walk with Deb... just the two of us...

Watching the boys play with their Utah cousins... and fight... like siblings... =-)

Spending time with the girls, Addie and Meritt... they rock!
Redfish Lake, Idaho, United States cotafamily4

... walked a couple of miles down the road to a ranger's program around a campfire. Before the program began, we watched ospreys flying away from the river with large fish in their talons. The name Redfish Lake, comes from the landlocked salmon that live there and used to be so abundant that they would turn the lake red when they were spawning. The ranger's program featured a local author who read a short story from his latest book ...

I had intended to get up before sunrise this morning to go take some photos. I didn't wake up until 7:30am which was WAY after sunrise. But I didn't want to waste my early morning rise so I headed out to take some photos since I did bring my "good" camera all this way.

Stanley Idaho is about a 3 hour drive from Boise on a 2-lane road through the mountains. It is a very picturesque drive but there wasn't really an opportunity to take pictures. Since Auntie Evelyne attendance this week was a surprise for Sara and Bill, we ...

... to the peak. Jacobi and Catarina branched off into a splicer of a chute while myself and the others grabbed the less technical mainline. The pitch was consistently in the high 40s and the sluff was enough to pile you down as I found out later. I dropped into this couloir first and half way down my sluff knocked me down and pushed me down the hill. I was able to self arrest before anything dramatic happened like plunging off a large cliffband. It was ...

... 3. Finca Magdalena, Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua. Overrun with naive hippies, bad food, dirty dirty dirty accomodations. Yuck Yuck Yuck. 4. Hotel La Clinica in Leon, Nicaragua. Unless you really want to be part of the family with the nosy, overbearing, bossy mama. 5. Comayagua Honduras. Really, nothing worth seeing. Even the clock can't be enough to drag you here. Avoid. Location of the second worst hotel of our trip. 6. Omoa ...

... pasta, and had yummy local beer. By the time the ritual of tea was over, and man it was a ritual, have you ever known pasta sauce to take 3 hours to cook???? And then to throw away the pasta because it was slightly overcooked? We were nearly eating each other by this point we were so hungry! Then to top it all off the guy in the next camp brought over a bowl of meat and we all descended on it like vultures!!! Pasta was good when we finally got it ...

... springs search. Our first stop was disappointing. The Basin Creek Hot Springs, on the shore of the Salmon River, were hot all right, but the river was so high that it washed out the sitting pools. So we headed downstream a bit further and it was pretty much the same at Sunbeam. The hot springs were well announced with an official National Recreation Area pullout, displays, and a restroom. And the springs were just about workable, but the river was just high enough that in the ...

... many more we just heard from deeper in the marsh. Some amazing and baffling sounds were heard from the backwaters. After loading the boats and having a bit of breakfast, we got in the rig and headed back WEST (to get back out of the mountains), then south, then finally in our direction of travel, EAST, along the main fork of the Payette, headed toward the Sawtooths and eventually the Sun Valley area. The river ...