We left Rexburg after the wedding to take a road trip out to the midwest. Dan dropped me off at Indiana University, where I took a 2-week course at the Summer Kodaly Institute for music teachers – I strongly believe that every music teacher needs to take this!
I could gush and go on about the Kodaly course and road trip, but I’m going to post about the 4th of July trip we took [in Idaho] just a few days after getting home from all of the festivities, traveling and studying. July 4th fell on a Tuesday this year, so Dan had only one day off for this trip. We’ve always wanted to go to Deadwood Reservoir because people have talked about catching literally buckets full of salmon there – with our fishing record, we were sure and excited about catching one!
Have you ever headed somewhere new and followed your preset directions until you saw a sign pointing to a different way to get there and started following that instead on a whim? Well, we did that Monday night and it turned out to be a scary 25-mile bumpy, one-lane dirt road through mountains with deadly cliff-edges! The views were gorgeous, but my appreciation of the sights was trumped by my fear of getting lost, damaging the car/boat, falling off the side, and running into a car headed the other way. We made it to our campground 2 hours later than expected, right when the sun was setting. Our campsite was right by the lake, and we had a good amount a space/privacy from the campers on either side. My pre-made tinfoil dinners were a yummy success (better than last time because I added cooking oil), and Bella had her first adorable run-in with a frog.
We woke up and packed up camp the next morning to go boating. We had seen a dock on the way in the night before, but did not want to head back in that direction [toward ‘deadly road’] because there’s gotta be a better way out of here when we’re done! We drove the other way around the lake [still dirt road] looking for another dock for what seemed like an hour or two with no success. The gas tank was down to its final quarter. Asked a car passing by for the closest town and best way to get there. Turns out that if we stayed on this dirt road for another 30 miles, we would reach the paved road that would take us another 30 miles to Cascade. Instead of turning around to go back to the first dock [to do what we were there to do!] we decided to fill up on gas at Cascade, then go fishing right there at Lake Cascade. This was the dirt road that we were originally supposed to take getting in – it was flatter and faster, but more round about from Boise.
Filled up the gas tank and launched the boat in Lake Cascade. We’ve been here before, and some of the things I remember are that my phone gets good reception, the grass grows tall in the water [lots of fishing lines getting stuck], and the water is really smooth for wake boarding.
We were ready to go, but…the boat engine would not start! [insert proper emoji here]
Then we went back home.
After this trip, we are going to make sure that we keep our gas tank full, carry a book map in case we get lost without reception, and to bring more than enough water.
Also, a future trip to Deadwood Reservoir will require more days than one to make the dirt driving worth it.
Hi, I'm Christina. 