Road Trip to Idaho - Day 3

Many of you know that that I just came back from Oregon and that there must be several blog posts just waiting to get to the computer. I want to finish with our visit to Idaho first. Day 2 was the June 30 post.

Payette Lake, bordering McCall to the north.

Our daughter-in-law had to fly home today, so Chris drove her to Boise and Dan and I found a place to hike. The plan was to drive to the Brundage Mountain lookout and find a hiking trail there that we had seen on a map. This downed tree kept us from driving any farther.

We had passed a crew that was working on the road and they got to this point as we were getting ready to start out hike at this point on the road.

We soon came upon another road block.

We continued on up to the lookout.

Before we got to the lookout we came to one of several ski lifts. Later Chris told us that his crew had run up this mountain, under the lift and in the snow.

The lookout was above.

This is the view from the lookout. That is the ski-lift in the foreground. Lake Payette is below and McCall is at the edge of the lake.

Here is a closer view. There are two lines in the center of the photo. The curved one is the main road. The straight one is the airstrip. The smokejumper base is to the right of that.

The brown building in the center is the building at the base and the airfield is to the left.

Panorama view to the southeast.

See that clearing in the middle of the photo, just to the right and lower of center?

That is this spot. Our green truck is in the center of this photo and the red truck is at the down tree.

Dan getting out of the wind below the lookout.

We have to take that selfie.

I was looking up at this map but I think during ski season I’d be looking at it straight on.

We were calling these guys chipmunks, but now that I’ve tried to identify it I think it may be a Fox Squirrel.

I don’t know what this bird is but I like the photo anyway.

The walk back down the mountain.

One last view.

There were lots of flowers emerging. I saw quite a few Mules Ears that were in the vegetative stage, but because the plants are usually so large, I have never noticed the ones that are just emerging.

Usually I spend a lot of time trying to identify flowers but if I do that I will never get on with my blog posts. I’ll just enjoy these without knowing.

This one is very identifiable. Yellow Avalanche Lily, Erythronium grandiflorum.