Gary and our friends.
I truly hate to blog this for fear of the secret hideout of Idaho will be revealed. My husband and I have gone to Idaho several times and every time I go, I tell everyone at work that we are going there to see friends. They all sigh and say "why would you go to Idaho, there is nothing there." Now if we really want to point out the over publisized "Sun Valley," "Gateway to Yellowstone" and of course "McCall," Idaho is pretty flat and ugly. But sometimes you have to go where the party is and that is where our friends are. They live at the top part of Idaho, and believe me it is totally under estimated, and overly gorgeous.
Again I say we have been there several times and every time we go we see a new beauty of Idaho. This last visit was on a scare tactic to my husband. My husband was born in the mountains. His parents took him camping all the time because that was what they could afford. I think that put a bad impression in his head and he swore when he could afford a hotel, he would never camp in the dirt ever again. We call him Mr. Sheraton. But the last time we were in Idaho, our friends told me that they would teach me how to fly fish, which in their mind meant camping as well. So for months I told Gary that we were going to Idaho to go camping, he was not happy. Just shy of us going up there, our friends said that without electricity to the camper, we wouldn't be able to camp. I waited until we got there to tell him the bad new for me, good news for him.
I usually don't blog these trips to Idaho just because they are usually laid back and not a lot going on, but this time with us fishing, the rivers were so beautiful, I just had to share it.
Kenny works at a fish hatchery up there which releases not just a few thousand, but hundreds of thousands of salmon every year. We were just lucky enough to be there when the small little salmon, about 3" long, were being tagged. Just a few years ago this was done by hand by women that would go from hatchery to hatchery, now it is done by machine. Follow along with me and I will try to explain, it was quite interesting.
The men along the side of the machine wait for the fish to be sorted by weight and length. Each fish has it's picture taken and it goes through these machines to have a tag put along the side of its eye, which registers them from this hatchery and the date it was tagged. It also has one of its fin's sniped.
The ladies in the back take care of the fish that slip through the machinery and they hand tag them. This trailer moves from hatchery to hatchery with these same individuals through the whole summer.
They initially dump the fish in this bottom container and its sucks the fish through the machinery. The hose resembles them going upstream like salmon have an instinct of doing.
You can't tell, but these monitors show the fish being photographed as they go through the machinery.
Here is the machinery that tags the fish and clips their one fin.
Here are the little clippings from their fins.
The whole process of tagging the fish was pretty amazing and to think women did these thousands by hand a couple of years ago.
We then went up river to find a place that Kenny liked for us to fish in. After being on this trip, I believe that all fly fisherman must have a little ADD in their system, let me explain that as well.
As we were driving Wonda would look out the side window and scream "too steep, too steep." I thought this was a little odd, until Kenny had had enough and just pulled over and said this is where we are fishing. Once I got out of the car, and looked down the dirt/tree/rock cliff I was suppose to crawl down, that is when I realized what "too steep" meant. Scary!!!!! But I did get down and here are a few pictures from our first day fly fishing.
You can't tell very well, but there is a fish hanging from my line next to my pants. That is one of the two fish I caught this weekend.
Later we went down stream a little ways and set up camp for dinner. We played in this stream that entered the main river. Wonda made this very delicious hobo dinner, even though we had to wait a little while, waiting always makes the food taste even better.
From crawling around on the rocks, I slipped a few times, but never felt like I hurt, but by the time I sat in the car for an hour to go home, my ankle must of relaxed enough and I hyper extended my ankle. The leg started swelling and by the time I went to bed I was in so much pain I wondered how far was it to the nearest hospital. Lucky for me by the morning it was just a little bit swollen and I was ready to go with horse ace bandage on me. Giddy-up.
The next day we headed out and Kenny wanted to show us the waterfalls. Now like most photos you don't get the true perspective. The amount of water and the force in which the water falling around these rocks were quite amazing. When you looked at the sides of the river you could see how high where the spring run off would have been, amazing, at least 40 feet up.
We then headed farther up stream to the very last camp ground and decided to set up camp for the day. The water was absolutely beautiful and the temperature was so hot I was so tempted to jump in the river and take a swim. The waterfall below reminded me of why I didn't want to do that.
We played in the water, fished a little and totally enjoyed the day. I made up some Hungarian Golash in the dutch oven and we thoroughly just had a wonderful camping out for the day.
Relaxing in the shade.
HAVE TO HAVE THOSE ROASTED MARSHMELLOWS
Next day was lay around and do absolutely, or almost nothing. We watched shows, played on the computer, but finally got it together and went out to dinner. When you drive through these small towns there are a lot of little shops and restaurants that from the outside I am not sure in a regular city I would step into, and so goes the steak house we went into outside of their small town. The ribs, and fries were fabulous. Sometimes the best things are the unexpected ones.
In checking on the flight schedule for standbye seats we realized we were going to have problems getting out of Idaho. But our friends told us that they would be happy to drive us 3 hours to Spokane, that is called a true friend. But we didn't have to, we just had to wait for the next flight and so we hung around with our friends going to a movie, shopping, eating pie, and just enjoying the day while waiting for that flight home.
"No please don't make me go."
Thanks guys it was a memory not easily forgotten
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