Adventures in Idaho

A week after I got out of school, I met Katie at the airport in Billings, and we started out on our adventure. We'd been planning to backpack in Idaho for years, and it finally worked out. We had a beautiful drive through western Montana's tiny fly-fishing towns and a very snowy drive up Big Hole Pass before descending into Idaho. We got to Salmon, Idaho where we met up with our host and old friend, Chris.

We explored the down-home town of Salmon:

And we spent a day hiking into the clouds toward a fabled lake, which we never found. The snow melt turned our trail up the mountain into a raging river, which we slogged up for hours. Eventually, even my gore tex boots couldn't survive the water that poured over the tops and we soon had icy toes (literally)...even so, we carried on through the river and snow, but at last, alas, we had to turn back, never having reached Geertson Lake...NOT one of my favorite things to do. (Turn around, that is).

Up into the clouds we go:
We made a river crossing early on in the hike - if we'd only have know what would lie ahead. The reason Katie's boots are off is that we'd already thrown our boots across the river intending to ford it, but then we found a little bridge. ;)
At the end of the day, there was still a little left in me for a some frolicking.
I left almost all the photos to Katie this trip since she had a fancy new camera. When I get some of those pictures, I may post some even better pictures of our time in Idaho...until know, these will have to do!