Trip Log

7/1-7/5/05 Anniversary Trip

Kelly and I took a really fun trip to Idaho for our first anniversary last year. The plan was that we would meet up with Joe and his crew at The City of Rocks on the first night, spend the next day and night camping and messing around, then Kelly and I would head out to Bancroft where her grandmother grew up and is buried to see some family history, then on the way back from Bancroft stop by Lava Hot Springs and indulge in some R&R, then back to Boise to kill the last day before we had to head back home for work for a grand total of 1625 miles in 5 days. Things didn't go exactly as planed.

We started out form our home in Cameron Park early in the morning on Friday 7/1 on our way to the City Of Rocks National Reserve. I had been to City of Rocks back in my college days with friends and had fond memories of it, so I wanted to take Kelly. It's basically just a big spread out campground but it has all these really big rocks sticking up out of the valleys that the pioneers passing through on the California Trail, Salt Lake Alternate Trail and later on freight routes and the Kelton, Utah to Boise, and Idaho stage route thought looked like a big city with tall buildings. It is a haven for rock climbers and mountain bikers. The original plan was to take 80 west to 30 north and then hammer out a few miles on dirt roads to get to The City of Rocks. Dew to a navigational error however we turned north off 80 to soon on 93 and didn't realize our mistake till we had almost reached the border of Idaho. At that point we pulled over and whipped out the laptop to asses our options. All three digital maps that I had showed a forest service road heading east from just north of Rogerson Idaho on 93 more or less (windy but basically easterly) strait over to Oakley Idaho just outside of City of Rocks. We decide it would be fun and faster if successful to risk it and try to make it through in Bella or trusty Subaru forester. 60 miles off road or 90 miles on? In retrospect it may not have been the best choice from a purely time stand point. On the other hand we were on vacation and I would rather be exploring forest service roads than fighting traffic, even Idaho traffic. Kelly manned the GPS and laptop as the navigator and did an awesome job of guiding us while Bella impressed us with her rally sport heritage. There was one spot where the road had been washed out and filled in with rocks and lose dirt that was about as wild as you wana get in a car that you are still makin' payments on, but other than that it was a breeze and the scenery was really nice. We gassed up at Oakley's only pump and were in the City of Rocks well before dark. Now the campground was a lot bigger and more spread out than I remembered and I had neglected to remember what the site number that we had reserved was. Also it turns out that there is no ranger on duty at a park entrance or anything like that to ask, so we were stuck looking at all the little sign posts by each campsite looking for our name. We found it fairly quickly (within an hour) because I did remember that the lady I made the reservations with told me it was at the top of a pass. Problem was I had also assumed that the gate house ranger would direct Joe and his bunch to our campground too and clearly that was not going to work. So after setting up camp a bit with Kelly I left to go look for Joe and his posse and once again lucked out and found them more or less right away. So having found the campsite and gotten everyone there it was all about havin' a good time. We had hotdogs for dinner and sat up late around the campfire with a nice breeze blowing and the lights of Burly way off in the distance.

The next morning 7/2 we set out to climb on one of the big rock near our camp. With two kids and three adults we figured that we would have no trouble helping the kids up, but dang those kids are crazy. We got a good way up but at some point the parents exceeded there tolerance for risk. It was a beautiful view form up there and the kids had a great time. After that we decide to drive up into the Sawtooth National Forest and see if we could find some snow for the kids to play in a bit. We also decided to take the opportunity to gather some of the abundant downed wood. When we came out of the woods back down to our camp site the wind had really picked up and we were kinda up on a ridge so after not much thinking about it we decide the thing to do was to give up our paid camp site and go up into the forest again to camp the next night. We just dropped the tent poles and folded the whole tents and all their contents up in the ground cloth and shoved them in the backs of the cars and we were off. It turned out to be a great choice. We had a fun time up there and the kids could run free in the woods. Though sterling exhibited the tendency to really wander. If I were to go back to the City of Rocks I wouldn't ever bother with the campground reservations figuring if the campground was full I would just head up and camp in the public land.

The third 7/3 was Kelly and Is' anniversary so it was time to ditch the brother and get some more romanticall one on one time. We lollygagged around camp a bit having some breakfast and cleaning up camp then we left Joes gang a started down the long road mountain road back to City of Rocks and beyond. As we were just coming out of the woods with the windows down we started to hear someone shouting of in the distance. We didn't think to much of it. There were a lot of people around but the sound came closer and eventually I started thinking it sounded like Joe. I stopped and sure enough Joe pulled up next to us on his mountain bike. It turned out they had left the lights on in there van to much and the battery was dead. Fortunately I had cables so we through Joes bike in and crammed him in the loaded back seat and went back up into the woods one more time to give him a jump. Then we were finally really off and I think it was pushin 11:00. It was about two hours to Pocatello where we got lunch at a family restaurant just south of 86 on Yellowstone Av. And then about another hour over to Bancroft. Bancroft is a small town like six block by four blocks. It is the kinda town where you feel like everyone you pass is starin' at you thinking "Who are those strangers?... They must be farmer Mcgillicuddys kin" We drove about a mile out of town to the beautiful Bancroft Cemetery where some of Kelly family in buried including Kelly grandmother and namesake Carma Kelly Boston who was buried in August 2003 right before Kelly and I met for the first time, and Marie E Kelly her great grandmother. I would like to be buried in a cemetery like this one; surrounded by grain fields with a train track near by and creek. It was very peaceful. We didn't know where the family graves were so we had to search quite a bit but we found them all together near a big pine tree. Then we went back into town look for the home of Marie E Kelly. We didn't know the address but Kelly had seen it in pictures so we just started driving around town till she spotted it. It didn't look like anyone was living in it anymore. My concussion was that Bancroft would be a great place to live if it wasn't in the middle of nowhere. Having paid a visit to the family estate it was time for some afternoon recreation. We drove over to the nearby Lava Hot springs. We had a hankering for a relaxing soak in the pools. There is a big Swimming pool complex on one end of town and a smaller hot pool kinda place on the other. The streets were packed with vacationers and people were walking up the street dragging all kinds of inflatables. We found out that you could rend something to float on, jump in the river at the top of town then ride the river waves down to the low end, hop out then walk or get a ride up and do it again. It looked like fun but just not what we were looking for. We signed up for a privet bath and we made the right choice! The water was really hot and the tub for lack of a better word was huge. It was about 5' deep and maybe 7 or 8' square. We stayed in for about 15 or 20 minutes and had to get out for a while to cool off. We went for another round before getting dressed in the clean clothes we had brought. Talk about relaxing! I was so relaxed I could hardly stand up, so we got two Creamies and went and laid in the grass for a while before getting on our way back toward Joes house in Boise. Kelly has a thing for this restaurant called Wingers that can be found along the I 15 so she looked it up in the GPS and found out there was one in Pocatello. She set in a course and we were there downing more than we should have of there awesome chicken in short order. Back on the road with full stomaches and the sun set, it didn't take long to realize that it was unrealistic to make it to Joes that night so we ended up getting a room in Twin Falls. It had been a fine day filled with beautiful scenery interesting places and good food and of course excellent company.

In the morning 7/4 we were lead astray by the GPS looking for an IHOP. It was trying to tell us it was on the south side of the river, but it ended up being on the north. We finally had to call IHOP to ask directions. Its a burn to have two thousand dollars of navigational equipment and have to ask directions. Anyway, we got some waffles and set our course toward Joes. I spent some time in the morning giving Bella some maintenance. After all that driving on dirt roads I cleaned her brake pads and gave her a new air fillter. Then we gave Kelly a bit of a lesson on welding. That night we all piled into Joe's mini van and settled into a spot along the top of an embankment where we figured we would be able to see the fireworks. Rather than having a big city show there was just a bunch of illegal fireworks all over town. It turned out to be a really cool. Plus as and added bonus Billy showed up with this girl and announced that he was set to make her his wife. In Fillmore fashion the rednecks down the way a bit lit fire to the hill side. They eventually got it out by throwing dirt on it, and then the fire department showed up half an hour later.

Day five 7/5. We got up early and hammered out the last 600 miles home. All told, I think it would be hard to cram much more fun into five days.

4/30-5/1/05 Weekend at Hetch Hetchy

There had been some kind of a scheduling fluke were Kelly managed to get Friday Saturday and of course Sunday all off. We couldn't let the opportunity go by. Fate had grined our direction and we had to take advantage of such it to go camping together. Somehow we decided to go to Yosemite and hike around Hetch Hetchy reservoir. It's been a while but I think I worked till about noon of Friday while Kelly did a few last minute things to get us ready and then we took off for the park. Ted and I had taken a trip like this some years earlier and my plan was to more or less follow the same agenda. Friday night we would just drive down and find someplace to camp and do a bit of exploring and then Saturday we would Hike around Hetch Hetchy and then drive home so we could make it to church on Sunday.