Adventures in Idaho

We had the opportunity to visit my brother (we'll call him Shooter - he knows why!) while he was hunting for a moose. The area he drew in was quite near my mother's ancestral home and so we were able to stay in the farmhouse she grew up in on what used to be my Grandpa's dry farm. The boys are quite enamored of The Farm and we all had a great time thanks to my aunt's generousity in allowing us to stay!

The boys spent the better part of two days with these clothespins. They made all sorts of shapes and animals and played games with them. So now I know what to get them for Christmas!

If someone out there has an excess of that filthy lucre, send it my way because I wouldn't mind living with this view.

This is the house my grandparents built before moving to the Lower House after my great-grandparents died.

This is the one-room schoolhouse my mother and her siblings attended along with the other kids from neighboring farms.

We did a little fishing/reconnaissance for moose one evening:

Here is where we put in the river. I thought the remnants of this old bridge looked cool.

While Shooter and The Mister took the other vehicle to the take-out point, the boys and I waited with the boat and I took this picture from the shore of the Teton River. Had we been up there a week later, I could have gotten a picture of the full moon rising over the Tetons.

Getting on the river. As you can see, MKIA is determined to go wading despite the fact that it is nearly sunset and the ambient temperature was probably below 50. Suprisingly, he ended up getting his pants wet and thought he would freeze to death before we reached the take-out and the car.

I saw a moose as we were coming home from church on Sunday. Therefore, I was promoted to Moose-Spotter and went out later that evening to help with the hunt.

I may have been playing with the camera occaisonally.

I think Shooter may have shot the Baby Daddy of these moose.

Don't tell The Mister that I took the 4Runner down this 4-wheeler trail through one of the canyons!

Still playing with the camera!

In the end, the hunt was successful and Shooter shot his moose.

The boys weren't quite sure what to think of the moose. SP was torn between revulsion and wanting to hack a piece off and eat it right there. I think MKIA just wanted to see what SP was going to do.

Another Redneck Weekend

This last weekend, our family went on an adventure to the little mountain lake up in the canyon. We gathered up the fixin's for a picnic lunch and drove on up the canyon. The Mister was driving and felt impelled to drive as quickly as he could despite the winding, twisting road. So SP and I were both feeling somewhat carsick by the time we reached our destination. However, we found a little cove by the lake and after a little lunch everyone was feeling better.

It has obviously been too long since my last physics lesson because I forgot Newton's Fourth Law which states that when a boy intersects with a body of water, they must interact. Or, in other words, boy+Water=wet.

Being rednecks, we were able to improvise:

We were in a kind of secluded little spot so they were able to get into the water and covered before they were in view of anyone else.

After the refreshing dip, we walked the trail around the lake. During one of the many "rest" breaks we took while The Mister tried to catch a fish, NT found this treasure.

I had to insist that he stop touching it since he had ideas of taking it home and perhaps having it for dinner. At least someone caught a fish!

Meanwhile, the entire walk around the lake SP asked approximately 718 times why he couldn't just try to ride on this dead tree that other rednecks were using as an improvised canoe. After explaining that we did not have swim shorts and The Mister wasn't towing him out there in his underwear the first 20 times that he asked, I began tuning him out. I instead took a picture of a wildflower for each time that he asked. I'm not sure which of us was more distressing to The Mister!

I guarantee that if he happens to look over as I post this picture, he will ask at least one more time why we insisted on ruining his childhood by not letting him go sit on the log with everyone else.

I'm not sure why I bothered having the boys take off their shorts during the time that they swam because they still managed to wade out in the lake several times during The Mister's fish breaks. Which led to the redneck clothes drying method:

The Mister's Clampett radar was working overtime!

On the way home, we stopped here:

Here the boys were able to put on their shorts - which were now dry - and immediately wade into the spring water, getting them wet again.

After this stop, we headed for home once again. I believe The Mister had vague ambitions of stopping at the dam in order to try his luck fishing again. However, I made the suggestion of turning off at one of the sideroads, just to see what might be up there. Turns out this was the road to Ephraim's grave. Neither of us had ever been there so we decided to check it out. After all, it was only 9 miles away so it wouldn't take too long.

HAHAHAHA! It turns out that on dirt roads through the mountains, you can't drive as fast as you do on the highway! SP spent the next 45 minutes asking if we were there yet while The Mister and I put bets on how many times we would hear that question before reaching our destination. NT spent the time like this:

We did see a deer run across the road which pleased The Mister to no end because I then made him stop and back up and then drive forward again several times in order to get the right angle to photograph the deer. So worth it!

We finally made it to Ephraim's grave. I managed to get NT to stop crying after being woken prematurely long enough to take this picture in order to memorialize this unforgettable family trip.

(For you who may not know, Ephraim was the last recorded grizzly bear in this area. He was killed in 1923. He stood nearly 10 feet tall on his hind legs. Some scouts put up this monument in the 60's to mark the spot and the height of the monument matches Ephraim's height. His skull is in the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.)

After this, we debated which way to go home: we could go back the way we came or trust in the sign we had seen that told us that Blacksmith Fork canyon was only another 6 miles. (Technically, it said that Left Hand Fork - which is accessed from Blacksmith Fork canyon - was only 6 miles away, so we may have made some assumptions.) After deciding to go the way of Left Hand Fork, we spent the next hour and a half traversing up and down mountainsides and through valleys in search of civilization. We finally made it to Hardware Ranch and The Mister breathed a HUGE sigh of relief, knowing that we were not going to be lost in the mountains forever, listening to me ask again how glad he was that I had him fill up the gas tank before we left!

To help The Mister come to terms with the lost fishing time and as a reward for survival, we stopped at McDonalds so he and the boys could have cheeseburgers while I had a shake.

Fun times!