Attempted Travel

Bald Eagle at Warm River

Second Failed Attempt at Mesa Falls This Year
We had a little time last weekend, and decided to make a quick trip up to Mesa Falls, Idaho.  I wanted to see the falls with snow around them.  I dunno, I think it would be pretty.  We attempted to see it on Valentines Day and got as far as Bear Gulch and had to turn back because of snow pack on the road.  I figured a month and a half would be enough time to get the snow off the road to at least get to Lower Mesa Falls.  It was unseasonably warm during the month of March.

We turned East at Ashton, Idaho and headed out along highway 47, which becomes the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway.  The road dips down into Warm River Canyon and just before the road climbs up the side of the Island Park Caldera (the largest volcano in the world) there is a small section of river that is closed to fishing.  The fish know this.  There is a platform built out above the water where people can go feed the fish.  The trout right at that spot get very big.  Some of them are upwards of two feet long.

We no sooner got to the fish platform when two bald eagles began flying overhead.  One was a mature bald eagle and the other was an immature bald eagle.  It was very cool.  I always like to see the eagles.

Mature bald eagle

Mature and immature bald eagles

Learning to fly

When the eagles' display was over, we then proceeded to feed the fish.  I brought along a loaf of bread for this purpose.  The Hot Chick threw the bread in the water and I took pictures of some really big fish.  When you throw the bread in, it becomes a feeding frenzy.  It's a great place to take visiting family members, especially when they have young kids.

Big fish

Reel Big Fish

Feeding frenzy

Breeching...

Like a whale

We proceeded up the side of the volcano and descended into Bear Gulch.  On Valentines Day this was as far as we got.  From Bear Gulch to Lower Mesa Falls is three miles.  The road was clear and dry.  We thought we were good.  About a mile later, though there was a lot of snow on the road.  There were deep wheel grooves in it which meant it was somewhat passable, but I thought only if I had a four wheel drive would I attempt that.  My front wheel drive Chrysler Town and Country minivan was not built for those conditions.  Discretion being the better part of valour, I decided to turn around and go back.  It wasn't a total loss, however because we saw eagles and really big fish.

As we headed for home, I saw a sign that looked like a pair of binoculars.  That usually means birds.  We took that road to the Fun Farm Bridge near St. Anthony, Idaho and drove around through the countryside along the Nez Perce Historic Byway.  The Hot Chick pointed out a large nest with two big birds on it.  They were osprey.  This failed trip was looking up!

Osprey

again

Since we were near the world famous St. Anthony Sand Dunes, we decided to drive out to see them.  I wasn't really going to get out and play, I just wanted to check them out in case I wanted to bring the kids and maybe grandkids out later this summer.  I remember going to the sand dunes when I was a boy.

According to the magazines that care about dune buggying or four wheeling in the sand, the St. Anthony Sand Dunes right here in southeastern Idaho are the only place on earth that boasts every type of sand feature that enthusiasts like to ride on.  That's kind of cool, I think.

So, when the wind erodes the basalt out in the valley, and the wind is omnipresent here in southeast Idaho, the basalt breaks down into two major components.  First there is the loess, which gets deposited all over the valley.  That is what makes the great potatoes grow here in Idaho.  The other component is sand which blows and gathers at the sand dunes in St. Anthony.

The story goes that when the early Mormon Pioneers entered the valley here, the wind was so bad that they camped to wait it out.  After one night, some of the men went to Thomas E. Ricks, the leader and said, "Let's pack up and go."  He is reported to say, "Why don't we wait until the wind dies down."  And that is how Rexburg, Idaho was settled.

One of the dunes

...and another

  We'll spend some quality time on the dunes this year, I think.  I need to see them again.  They cover hundreds of acres, maybe thousands here in the sagebrush steppe that is southeastern Idaho.

So, for not getting to see what we set out to see, it wasn't a bad day.  There is really so much to see here in southeast Idaho.  I've spent a lifetime here and haven't scratched the surface.  This is truly an idyllic place.

2013--Island Park, Idaho: Springs

Headwaters of Warm River

Normally, by this time of year, we would have made somewhere between three and five trips to Yellowstone.  This year, however, since I was acting in a play, we only made it up once, on Memorial Day weekend.  It was the only weekend day I was not involved in rehearsal.

Last Friday, the show ended and I had no obligations to be around on Saturday.  We had to wait for my son to get home from Treasure Mountain, Boy Scout Camp where he is a staff member this season.  He returned home at about three in the afternoon which meant a Yellowstone trip wasn't going to work.  We did, however decide to visit Island Park.

Island Park is a great vacationland on the Idaho side of Yellowstone National Park.  It is situated inside the crater of the largest volcanic caldera known to exist on the planet.  The community of Island Park boasts the longest main street anywhere in the world.  It is around 31 miles in length.

Island Park is truly a wonderland.  There is a movement among some groups to make Island Park into a National Monument which would essentially enlarge the borders of Yellowstone.  From the time you descend into the caldera until you reach the town of West Yellowstone, you are in a beautiful lodgepole pine forest with rivers, lakes, ponds and springs.  There is Harriman State Park, Henry's Lake, a migratory bird refuge, big game animals and several small communities of vacation homes all along highway 20.  It is idyllic.  Yellowstone gets all the press, but Island Park has plenty to offer.

We decided to visit a couple of the springs in Island Park for our short trip on Saturday.

We took the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway from Ashton, Idaho up through Bear Gulch and past Mesa Falls.  One of my neighbors had told me about Warm River Spring which gushes out of the side of the cliff about forty to fifty feet up and cascades down the side of the mountain.  We needed to see that one.  I wanted to show my boys where rivers come from.

Warm River Spring issues about 200 cubic feet per second of water, and the temperature is a constant 50 degrees all year long.  Some rivers will freeze over, but not Warm River.  Even when it gets to sub-zero temperatures it doesn't freeze.  It's because the water is heated underground from the residual effects of the last volcanic eruption.

In the 1930's, the CCC (Civil Conservation Corps) built a fish hatchery and cabin at the site of Warm River Spring.  The hatchery is long gone, but cabin is still there and is available to be rented.  The CCC tapped the spring during the great depression and some of the water still pours out of pipes that were put in place at that time. 

As I walked past the cabin, I smelled the unmistakable scent of Yarrow.  There were hundreds of mature Yarrow plants in the "lawn" in front of the cabin.  I like Yarrow a great deal and I don't know if it's a real thing or if it's my imagination, but when I'm hiking and my muscles get fatigued, I crush up some fronds of Yarrow and hold it to my nose and inhale it.  It seems to make me have more energy and my muscles to lose some of that tension.

When I was a boy in scout camp, one of the merit badge counselors told me that the Native Americans used to chew on Yarrow for relief of toothaches.  It apparently has mild analgesic properties.

Yarrow flowers

Yarrow fronds

The cabin at Warm River Spring

The headwaters of Warm River.  Note the two pipes at the top of the spring.  Those were installed by the CCC

The water comes out quite rapidly

Drinking from some of the purest water on earth

Apparently it meets the standard.  It did seem a little warmish though, but without the sulphur aftertaste you might get in Yellowstone. 



The family at the spring so you can see how large it is

The family at the spring

From Warm River Spring, we went to a place called Big Springs, which is near the hamlet of Macks Inn.  Big Springs is a different kind of spring than Warm River Spring.  Big Springs bubbles up from the ground while Warm River Spring erupts from the cliff face.

On our way over, we stopped for a couple of pictures.  One was of an osprey in a nest and the other was of the Tetons.

Osprey on nest

The Teton Range from Island Park

Back in the early part of the twentieth century, a German immigrant named Johnny Sak moved to Island Park and built a cabin at Big Springs.  He was only 4'-11" tall.  He met a girl in Ashton that he loved and she loved him, so he went to Big Springs and built a cabin for her.  It took him more than two years to complete it, and when he went to get her, he found she had gotten married.  He lived in the cabin as a hermit for the rest of his life.  He made his living by making beautiful, hand crafted furniture from Douglas Fir.  He would bury a tree for a year, allow the worms to eat trails through the bark and then he'd dig it up and shave the bark down to the worm burrows and make his furniture from that wood.  On another excursion, I'll take photos inside the Sak cabin.  By the time we arrived on Saturday the cabin was closed.  The workmanship inside is very beautiful.

Johnny Sak cabin

Big Springs is the headwaters of the Henry's Fork of the Snake River.  One of the big attractions here is that fish from the hatchery in Ashton migrate up the river and find sanctuary under the bridge.  Fishing is illegal at Big Springs and so the trout grow to enormous proportions.  There is a machine that dispenses a handful of Purina Trout Chow (yes there is such a thing) for a quarter and you can feed the fish.  Seagulls and ducks have found that handouts are a cheap way to get a meal here, and I have in the past seen muskrats.

Sadly, some rotten people came in on snowmachines last winter and killed the fish.  I don't know if they were hunting trophies or were eating them or were just rotten people.  The fish haven't recovered yet and we only saw a few of them and they were normal size.

Big Springs has a temperature of 52 degrees year round and is not subject to freezing either, the same as Warm River.  The water percolates through glacial sediments and volcanic debris.  Geologists believe it is water that originates as snowfall and rainfall and absorbs into the ground all over the area and expresses itself at Big Springs. 

It is about six miles off the main road, so it never seems to be crowded.  My parents used to take us there when we were little kids.  I have made sure to take my kids there as well.

The headwaters of the Henry's Fork of the Snake River, Big Springs

Me being bald

The hot chick and I at the headwaters of the Henry's Fork

Spider making a living at Big Springs

Beautiful view along the trail

Random boulder.  I like rocks, so it was a natural shot for me to take

The pumphouse that Johnny Sak built

Seagull far from home

And his brother

I was trying to take a picture of the fish in the river and what I ended up taking was a picture that looks like a watercolor.  My personal favorite picture of the day.  Totally serendipitous.

View of the spring from the bridge

It was a very nice half day trip.  One that I'd like to make again.  There are a few trails at both Warm River Spring and Big Springs.  We didn't take them this time for lack of time and the fact that I injured my ankle awhile ago and it hasn't healed all the way.  We will take the trails in the future though.  We truly live in a magnificent part of the world.

2012 Washington--Chimene's Class Reunion

Chimene, the Hot Chick and friends at her 30th class reunion

Chimene had never been to any of her class reunions.  Since the advent of the internet and things like Facebook and other social networking sites, it has become increasingly easy to connect with old friends.  Some of Chimene's high school friends contacted her and she expressed her desire to attend her 30th class reunion.  She planned and saved for it for months and had things worked out so she could carpool up to Seattle with a friend who was also attending, but at the last minute the friend backed out and she had no way to go.  I decided to drive up with her because I didn't want her to drive up alone for that long of a trip.  I'm glad I did.

We lived in western Washington for about six years in the mid to late 90's and we loved it up there.  We had a lot of friends and a lot of favorite places to go while we lived there.  Chimene had been back a time or two since we moved to Idaho in 2000 but I never had.  It was high time I went.

Day 1
We were in quite a hurry to get up to Washington and so on the way up we didn't stop for any photo ops.  We just drove straight through.  It's about a fourteen hour drive to get to where we were going,  We just had to soldier on.  I will say that the scenery on the northern route is much prettier than it is on the southern route.  The northern route goes through Montana and across eastern Washington whereas the southern route goes through the desert of Idaho, then up through Oregon and the Tri Cities area of Washington.  The northern route is about two hours shorter as well.  That was how we opted to go this time.

Chimene had already made contact with her brother Bryan to stay at his home while we were there, and on the way up I made contact with one of my very best friends, Tom, and told him we were going to be up and wanted to see him and Kris, his wife.  We arranged to meet up for lunch the next day.

We arrived at Bryan's house late in the evening on Thursday and visited for a short time and then went to sleep.

Day 2
We got up the next morning and drove around the area for a little while, then we made our way up to Lake Stevens, Washington to meet up with Tom and Kris.  While we were waiting for Tom, Chimene shouted for me to stop the car and pull over.  I did and she jumped out and ran over to a wild blackberry bramble and started picking the berries.  I got out and had to start eating them too.  I'd forgotten how well everything grows in Washington.  I used to tell her when we lived up there that it wasn't fair that in Washington, even the weeds looked good.  We told Tom where we were and he came and guided us to his home.

Wild blackberry--They are everywhere up there

More blackberries

The Hot Chick at the blackberry bramble

The line of plants just above her head is a single blackberry bramble

Some of our very best friends, Tom and Kris

When he found out that we were coming up, Tom called in and took the day off work.  He can do that, he's the boss.  We went to lunch on the waterfront in Everett, Washington with Tom and Kris.  Chimene had to go to her reunion dinner down in Seattle, and Tom said he needed to take me out on his boat.  Chimene didn't figure she'd be gone long.  She said she'd stay until everyone started drinking, then she'd come back for me.  Not much fun being a non-drinker at a drinking function.

Tom and I went out on the Puget Sound on his boat and planned to catch a salmon or two while we were there.  We went out to the marina, boarded the boat and headed off into the sound.  For some reason, everything conspired against us catching fish that day.  It didn't matter though because I had a great time with my friend.

We navigated through the slough, to the Sound, but the drawbridge was down and we had to wait for a very long time for a train to pass.  When it passed, the sun was already on it's downward arc as we headed out for deep water.  As we were approaching the fishing grounds, the boat started acting up.  Tom had just had it serviced and the mechanic assured him it was good to go.  I don't know what the problem was, but it seemed like a fuel pump issue to me.  We got to cast into the water a few times, but didn't get a bite.  The boat issue was vexing to Tom and he tried and tried to get it resolved.

The issue kept getting worse and we were stranded out on the Puget Sound for a long time.  He could get the boat going for a short time and we'd go for as far as we could but eventually it would stall and we'd drift back out to sea.  We were going two steps forward and one step back.  Finally we called Vessel Assist and at eleven o'clock at night, we were towed back to the marina.  It was vexing to Tom, but I didn't mind.  I got to spend some time with my buddy whom I hadn't seen for ten or so years.  Even though there was the boat problems, we had a very nice visit.

When we finally got back to Tom's place, Chimene still wasn't back.  She had been having such a nice time with her friends that she opted to stay longer.  Seems like everyone had grown up a bit and no one was getting drunk.  She texted me several times during the evening asking if it was okay for her to stay.  I told her the reason we came up was for her to go to her reunion and to stay as long as she liked.  Besides, Tom and I were stranded on the Sound.

When we finally were rescued, Tom took me to a garage where he showed me his hobby cars.  Have to say I was a little bit jealous.  Chimene finally came to pick me up at about one o'clock in the morning and we drove back to Bryan's home where we slept.

Tom's boat

Waiting for the train

Finally getting out on the Sound

The sunset over the water

The wake from the boat

More sunset action

More sunset action

Attempting to fish

Vessel Assist

Day 3
We spent the morning with Bryan and Kara and his family.  They have a good strong family and their children are bright and cute.  Great kids, well mannered and well behaved.  They are doing a very good job with them.  Of all Chimene's family, I have bonded with Bryan and D'Lynn the most.  We are very good friends, and we love to talk politics and smack.  We're hopeful that Bryan and Kara will bring their family to Idaho for a vacation so we can show them around Yellowstone.

Chimene became the favorite auntie to the little girls because she had cool shoes and let them wear them.  She also fixed their hair and I think put a little make-up on them.

The nieces in Chimene's shoes.  They were an instant hit

Well behaved kids (take after their mother)

The nieces

Ring around the rosie

A good family

Zombie kids.  No wonder I liked them so much

Chimene, Bryan and Kara

We drove down to Kirlkand where the second day of the reunion was going to take place.  It was in one of the waterfront parks on Lake Washington, a favorite place of some of her classmates who used to go and get inebriated there.  Seemed like a good sentimental choice to me.

Chimene spent a great deal of time getting reacquainted with her friends and I visited some, but spent some time in the park taking pictures of the flora and fauna.  I figured this event was about Chimene and not me, and I didn't want to get in the way.  I also didn't want to hurry her because this was her trip, this was what we came for.  She had a great time and I'm glad we could do this for her.

Chimene's friends

Table full of friends

Chimene in her element.  As you can see, this party went on until dusk

More friends

The parks in and around the Seattle area are always beautiful, and this one was no different.  At the time of this posting, I can't remember which park we were at, but it really doesn't matter because they are all spectacular.  I spent a great deal of time enjoying the nature of it.  Some of her friends thought I was daft because I was taking close-ups of tree bark.  I've been called daft before, so it didn't bother me.  As a designer, I love texture.  Always have.

Footbridge.  Idyllic

Lichen

 

Tree bark and moss

Someone's home

Juxtaposition

Living and dead together

 

Contrast

 

Light and shadow

Translucence

 

Sunset over Lake Washington

Mount Ranier

Day 4
After breakfast, we thanked Bryan and Kara and their children for sharing their home with us and Chimene and I left for home.  We did stop in Seattle for a short time because we wanted to see Pike Place Market.  I hadn't been there for a long time.  We kicked around Seattle for a couple of hours and went to a waterfront park to take some photos.  While we were there, all these people wearing pink were walking along the parkway.  There was a walkathon for Breast Cancer awareness going on.  We talked to a few of the ladies who were all survivors.  They were delightful and so very optimistic.

The nephew

Bryan and Me

Pike Place Market

Big fish

Flying fish--what Pike Place Market is famous for

The Hot Chick on the boulder beach

Me at the same location

The ferry on the Sound

Survivors

Then came the grueling drive home.  We stayed in Seattle too long, and we drove most of the way home in the dark.  It was tough, but I wouldn't change it.  We made it home safe and we had a wonderful time.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped at a Carls Jr. for a burger.  Since I am allergic to everything good in the world except meat, I ordered a special sandwich.  The meat was bacon and the buns were two hamburger patties.  The guy at the counter got a kick out of making it for me.  It was well tasty.

My sandwich

I am glad we got to do this for Chimene.  I had been away from Seattle for far too long.  I was glad to see some old friends.  I didn't realize how much I missed it there until I went back.  I hope it won't be so long next time.