Redfish Lake Part 1

Last weekend was my Hubby's family reunion.  This is such a fun reunion because we head up to Red Fish Lake Lodge and rent a cabin.  Then we have the lake to play on all weekend, a beautiful view of the Sawtooth Mountains, 60 degree weather all weekend, food, and family.  Can't imagine a better weekend!

This year since I was not 38 weeks pregnant I did a little research before we left to see what kind of fun activities there were to be had.  Idaho is full of ghost towns and we were lucky enough to find two along with The Yankee Fork Gold Dredge.

We first drove through Bonanza, an old abandoned ghost town.  All we could do was drive through because it's on private property and the houses were falling down.  Three little kids would not do so well in that environment.

Then we headed to the Dredge.  This was a really magnificent sight.  Here are Bonnie & Chas standing outside the dredge.

We got to take a tour through the old dredge and it was really amazing.

Behind Chas in this photo are the iron buckets that would pick up the sediment.  They were huge!  As was the dredge itself.

This is the third set of scary stairs we had to walk up to get to the top of the dredge.  Once up there it was a slow walk down as we were told all about the dredge and how it worked.

Working the levers.

The engine Room.

Once were finished at the dredge we headed over to Custer.  That was a fun little ghost town owned by the Forest Service so it was nicely maintained and had a few volunteers that could tell us a little about the area.

This is where Charlotte was during most of the walk through Custer.  Custer
was a blast.  The kids could run around into all the buildings and check things out.  Then in the school house they could sit in school desks and write on chalk boards.  I'd say the highlight was then getting to ring the school bell.  They thought that was the best.  Then we all headed home because we were pretty tired from running around a ghost town all afternoon.