Departure from Zion
We escaped the Zion heat to a forest service campsite at 8400 feet elevation. More great scenery and it felt great! Forest Service campsites are basic and inexpensive, our preferred style of camping.

Destination: Boise first, then Stanley
An 11 hour drive day got us to Boise, Idaho, and our friend Bill’s house. This will be our home base for a few weeks, while we prepare for and clean up after a river trip. I find Boise to be a very comfortable, ‘small big city’ of about 220,000 people. Two days after our arrival, we headed up to Stanley, Idaho for a two night camping trip. A campsite on Stanley Lake, dinner with local friends, a day hike and my and Eddy’s polar bear swim highlighted the trip. A cumulus cloud with a smoke plume foretold the forest fire smoke we would wake up to Friday morning. Time to head back to Boise. Several large forest fires are burning in northern Idaho in addition to others in Washington, Oregon and California. Fire crews from all over the country are fighting these fires.

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Back in Boise
“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged (Revised)” is a crazy play that works in all of Shakespeare’s writings in one bawdy evening of humorous entertainment. I highly recommend it if you like to laugh out loud.

Peg Kern’s Birthday celebration at Joe’s Crab Shack

Boise Greenbelt
Boise is a very bicycle-friendly city with many parks and the Greenbelt along the Boise River. It’s very popular and busy during the weekdays. I can get a 14 mile ride downtown and back home, mostly on the trail. The Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial and the Rose Garden are must-see stops along the way.

Forest fires and smoke changed our original plans to float the Salmon River, so we created Plan B. Fortunately, there are lots of rivers in this part of the country to choose from, so we are headed to Oregon. We got a permit to do a six day trip on the Rogue River in the southeast part of the state. It is one of the original Wild and Scenic Rivers and a protected area. It’s pretty exciting as it is new for all five people on the trip. Plans are to stop at Crater Lake National Park on the drive out there. Another stamp in my National Park Passport Book! Our take-out is within 45 minutes of the Pacific Ocean, so a seafood dinner out is the menu for takeout day.

Next post: the river trip.