Really covering ground now

We had just arrived in Picabo, ID when I last posted.  We learned the Silver Creek is quite something, a crystal clear stream, with a gravel bottom, interspersed with huge mossy areas, and ready to surprise you here and there with really soft, and deep, mud.  But full of large trout that you could actually see, although not catch, at least for us.  I will say Jan caught 3 small fish, Bill, nada.  After checking it out, we decided with the weather report we'd first take a large loop up and around Idaho, which actually got larger and larger and ended up being almost 300 miles!  

Our loop

And it was beautiful!  This part of Idaho is amazing, the scenery just kept us going!

The view off Galena Summit, 8701' between Sun Valley and Stanley
This is also the area of the headwaters of the Salmon River

Near Stanley

It was a gorgeous drive, we enjoyed it so much.

Also, near Stanley

The Salmon River before it gets really big

Some rain showers lurking

The next day was our fishing day, we went over to the Silver Creek Preserve and hiked in about 3/4 of a mile and fished a section of the stream.  We found out quickly that with the crystal clear water, it was often times way deeper than you thought as the water came up around your waist!  And it was flowing a lot faster than either of us thought, but it was nice, peaceful quiet, and I have to admit a bit frustrating when you could see sizable trout, but couldn't entice them to bite.  It is a heavily fished area and the fish have become quite savvy.

You can see how clear the water is

Another shot

Jan did manage to catch 3 small fish though.  We fished here for a few hours and then went back, had lunch and went to another spot.  We got all rigged up and headed for the creek when we looked up and saw a momma moose with her 7' tall "baby", and we decided maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

She stared us down until we went way, way around her to fish another spot
Jan caught one more here and me, none again

We really liked the campground here, just water and electric, you check in at the gas station and fly shop across the street, the sites were huge, dark and quiet, and the views nice.

One of our sunsets here in Picabo

But mostly we were covering ground, and we still had a long way to go.  Our next stop was in Boulder, WY, at Highline RV Park, another nice park with huge sites and great views, and wind unfortunately.

Our lunch stop on the way overlooking the Snake River

The brilliant canola fields

Our campsite at Highline

A pretty sunset in Wyoming

But now we really needed to cover ground, we had some family business we needed to attend to and that required Jan to be in Taos, NM, so we worked out a plan to detour with the motorhome to Buena Vista, CO, about 200 miles out of our way, and then drive in the truck the 200 miles one way to Taos, take care of business, and then drive back.  So it was a long, long day of 470 miles to Buena Vista, with all but 70 on two lane roads.  The scenery was awesome and we pulled into BV 10 1/2 hours later:-)

A view from Tennessee Pass north of Leadville, CO

A scary, at least to me, bridge near the pass

So into Mt Princeton RV Park, spent a quick night and off to Taos.  We had a nice visit with Jan's sister Karen and Tom, spent the night, Jan took care of business, and after a nice lunch we jumped back in the truck and drove back 200 miles to BV.  A lot of miles in 3 days, 870!  So now after a day of recovery here, we will finally pick up our original itinerary in Grand Lake, CO at the Winding River RV Resort, it's been quite a trip compared to what we had planned last winter, but a lot of fun, got lots of issues taken care of, and all in all had a great time, although a bit hectic.

Happy 4th of July!

We left Bend and headed south to Crescent, OR, basically a place we could launch to see Crater Lake.  We went there in 2005 and all the roads were closed due to snow, so we only got a glimpse of the lake.  On the way we were looking for someplace to have lunch and stumbled across the Newberry National Volcanic Monument.  We poked our nose in and found a place to park and decided to take advantage of being there and went off for a 1 mile loop hike, Trail of the Molten Land.  It was very interesting and had nice views regardless of the clouds and threatening rain.  But had quite the time negotiating our departure, man was it tight!!!!!

Snow covered mountains in the distance

Great Balls of Lava!
Actually they are called snowballs of lava. Pieces would
break off the main flow and tumble downhill similar to a snowball
These are about 15' in diameter!

The monument is quite large and the southern end was near where we were camped so we headed over the next day.  There are two lakes, Paulina and East, very pretty surrounded by lava, cinders, and even obsidian.  We took a short hike, I should say climb into the Big Obsidian Flow. 

Looking over East Lake, still threatening rain

Our climb into the obsidian flow

Pretty amazing scenery

We even found a waterfall

Having a great time!

The path through the flow

The native americans would come up to 200 miles once a year
to harvest obsidian for their tools, knives, arrowheads, etc

Fascinating, obsidian will fracture down to one atom thick,
making an obsidian knife up to 500 times as sharp as a steel blade!
Under magnification the obsidian in that thickness is smooth while a steel blade
looks like a saw edge.

The following day we went to Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the US at 1949'.  It is quite a sight, I mentioned the first time we went the roads were all closed for snow, well this time at the very end of June, half of the rim road was still closed for snow!

Approaching the rim, more and more snow

Damaged trees from the snow

Just to give you an idea of how much snow!

We drove around half the lake taking pictures, got in a short half mile hike, had a picnic lunch overlooking the lake.  Truly beautiful!

Wizard Island

The views are awesome

Some big trees out here!

Magnificent color of the water

One of the residents of the area, Clark's Nutcracker

We are now in process of rejoining our original itinerary in Colorado, but we had a few stops to make along the way.  We celebrated Jan's birthday with scallops for dinner, per her request.  Yummy, by the way.

Then we stopped in Boise to visit Jan's cousin Kris, and Sandy and see their new house.

After a great dinner out
Thanks guys!

We even got to wash our filthy motorhome and truck, I think we finally have all the ATF off:-)  Ran a few errands in the big city, then off to Picabo, ID to try to fish the famous Silver Creek.  I'll leave you with our first sunset in Picabo reflecting off our window.

More to come....