To Early

This morning I'm sitting here with my little guy. He woke me up before 6 am and all I could think was, it's too early to be making any noise in this house. So I did my usual routine of making him a bottle and wishing I might get a few more minutes of sleep. As usual it was futile and now we're sitting in the front room with him crawling around and me trying to keep him quiet. The one thing I don't want happening is little sister waking up - she NEEDS her sleep. She was quiet grumpy yesterday.

Jay and I escaped to Sun Valley last weekend and it was so fun. We decided to take the long was there through the mountains. It was such a beautiful drive and we stopped along the way to see different sites Jay had always told me about.

One of the stops was Bonneville Hot Springs. At these hot springs someone has built a shack and inside the shack is a tub that some of the water has been piped too. It was really cool - anyone can cork the tub and just take a hot bath.

We ate dinner in Lower Stanley by the river. It was so quiet and peaceful - by the way did I mention we left the kids with my sister. It was so peaceful at dinner. Then we passed Sawtooth City - its not big at all but again beautiful. As we went around a bend we noticed traffic was at a standstill. We had seen we were approaching a forest fire but Jay and I didn't think much of it - there are always forest fires at this time of year.


We got out of the truck and walked around. The fire was pretty close to the road. All of the sudden everyone started to notice that the fire was getting close to the road - literally we saw trees burst into flames. I must say it was an amazing site. We also saw helicopters dumping water on the flames. We were sent back to Sawtooth City and informed that a controlled forest fire got out of control. Ha! So after hanging around Sawtooth City and eating ice cream, taking a nap, and using the bathrooms Jay and I learn the might open the road up around midnight! You must understand at this point we'd been driving for about 5 hours, were maybe 20 miles from Sun Valley, and all we really wanted was a quite evening relaxing at the hotel.

Here's a photo of our shadows sitting on the door to the pickup bed.

So as soon as I hear about this midnight deal I headed back to the truck and changed our plans. That's me, the plan changer. I have absolutely no patience - ask my family, it's true. So the new route looked like we would be adding 4 hours of driving to our already 5 hours of a road trip. The plan was to drive north to Challis, then south the Arco, and then northwest to Sun Valley. On the way Jay was looking at our atlas/gazetteer and noticed a mountain road that could shave off at least a 100 miles.

Here's a photo of the helicopter heading back into the fire with water.



Back to the story our new mountain route was 2/3 paved and 1/3 rough road. We've done this before in the day light so why not take on another adventure. As soon as we get off the paved road we see large cattle sleeping off to the side and on the road, so of course I slowed down. Oh did I mention I'm driving because with Jay's vision he is unable to see well enough to drive at night - no depth perception. So we slow down and are really just having the time of our life. We see a coyote and more cows. Also the upward slope up the mountain is so gentle that Jay and I didn't notice how high up we were driving. Then we saw the signs for Sawtooth National Forest - I thought cool we are just having a great time.

Then we began the decent down the road/mountain and at this point Jay had already put the truck in 4 wheel drive for me, truthfully I couldn't tell a big difference. All of the sudden the road narrows and I was driving down a one lane gravel road. On top of that the drop off on the right hand side of the car was really steep. At the time Jay thankfully didn't mention it but he could tell it was a long way down.

Thankfully Jay suggested putting the truck into second gear and finally I felt like I had more control of the truck again. As I was driving this tight turn, a truck appeared coming towards me with a horse trailer. I guess everyone in Idaho does have a horse! Amazingly we seemed to both be able to fit on this insanely skinny road. As we were continuing down the gravel road Jay mentioned he saw a junction box for telephones. As usual I misunderstood him and I joked that maybe it was for people to call and ask for someone to pick them up because they are too scared to drive any further down the mountain. Jay laughed and said junction box, not a telephone. At that point I was so freaked out I think I just grunted a response. Then I mentioned - by the way I'm totally freaked out.

At some point we hit pavement again and proceeded into Sun Valley no problem. We checked into our hotel and I promptly fell asleep - I was exhausted.

All the photos were taken with my camera phone so they aren't so good but man what a trip.