Blacks Creek Road

This is a fun, curvy and quiet road that we’ve been on with motorcycles until the pavement runs out and turns to dirt. This time, we brought the truck to haul in our 4-wheelers, because Dan had heard that there were trails to explore in the area. We drove for miles on that dirt road and didn’t find anything, so decided to just park and continue on that road on the 4-wheelers. This always happens to us as soon as we make a decision: A few miles later, there was a gate open for trails that led into the mountains. The sites were gorgeous and the trails were accompanied by free-range cows that stared and ate as we passed by.

Kayaking

When my friends tell me they’re going camping for the weekend, about half of the time they say they’re heading out to Bruneau Dunes State Park. We decided to check it out with our new kayaks, knowing that the park had a lake surrounded by sand dunes. Got up early on a Sunday morning to beat the unbearable afternoon sun and drove an hour over to the park. We had the whole lake to ourselves. It was so still peaceful and I wanted to take pictures of all of the fish that swam with me, but photos wouldn’t do it justice. Dan parked his kayak about halfway through and climbed a dune to take a photo.

Happy Summer

School’s out, and yes, we’re back at the cabin in East Idaho. Running the Teton Dam 5K to kick off summer vacation was exactly what I needed. I think we’ll have to do this every year! (sorry, Dan!) The weather was cool and brisk, and I love that our shirts labeled us as Dam Runners, which encouraged us to practice our use of puns for the day…

There’s a ton of family history related to the dam, which collapsed in 1976, killing 11 people and ruining all crops that year. It hasn’t been rebuilt since. The Teton Dam Race did not take us to the site of the dam itself (I think the 1/2 or Full marathon would have taken us to the dam), but we ended up with a great tour of Downtown Rexburg, which also has it’s own Greenbelt. I could try for the half next year, but don’t think Dan would want to run that distance with me.

We also made two more attempts to make it up to the relay towers behind the cabin. Dan and I made it there on snowmobiles (my first time riding) when we first started dating, and we’ve made two other failed attempts to get up there since. This time, we got stuck in snow and ended up digging ourselves out for an hour or two. There was just too much snow up there in June. We were so close. These are the pictures of us just almost being there.

Deadwood Reservoir

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.

 

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