Saturday, August 20, 2016 When things go south

Saturday, August 20, 2016

Every morning, my paternal human smears some stuff on his face, then puts a stick in his paw and wipes all the stuff off.  He puts it in a bowl of water and it floats.  I sit in front of him and I try and play with it.  Sometimes, I dip my tail in the water.  My human then throws me on the bed.  Why is that?  It is harder to supervise from there!

This morning, we had to tie some leader line on to fishing hooks.  This is when I want my 'boy' to kick in and do my dirty work.  Leader line is incredibly fine line that is difficult to see and difficult to wrap sufficiently enough times to secure the hook.  I am wearing two pairs of glasses to magnify, while Spouse is wearing a jeweler's loupe and we are both full of potty mouth.  Ultimately, our poles are ready to go.  Rudy tried to help, so as soon as the hook was on, the pole went outside while we tied the next one.  With our poles ready to go, we headed out across the street and up a wee bit, to Sheep Bridge.

Sheep Bridge is where the meadow meets the creek, and the creek meets the mountain.  There are gazillions of trails anglers have made through the brush and along the creek, most of them lead to somewhere, others are dead ends.  It is a little smoky, the winds have shifted.  That old wildfire is expected to burn into winter.  Oy.  Spouse starts out by getting his lure eaten.  I cast and cast and cast.  I walk up the creek.  Spouse walks down the creek.  I decide I need different bait and go back to Spouse... who has just found 'the' pool.  Let the fun begin!  We both catch some, release some and are forced to keep those that are bleeding.  Oh darn, another meal...

My morning walk buddy

Today we are going to do some exploring a bit south of Stanley.  We know how beautiful the campgrounds are to the north, can the South compete?  We head south on 75 towards Ketchum.   Another beautiful drive with the Salmon River, meadows, and mountains.  Yawn, yawn, yawn...

In German, there is a word used to describe something on the cozy side.  It isn't quite cozy, but it is comforting.  The word is 'gemutlich' with an umlaut on the u.  On hwy 21 and points north, there are lots of campgrounds that have that gemutlich thing going for them.  South, not so.  It is beautiful without question.  But there are more people and they are lightweight frolickers as opposed to serious outdoors enthusiasts.   That is not to say that we didn't get lucky on some of these campgrounds by catching them at the right time, but I think not.  The campgrounds we tend to like are smaller, woodsy with firepits and with easy access to fishing and not a whole lot of amenities.  There are not a lot of kids (oh, kill me now!).  For RV parks, we prefer something on the smaller side, with trees and a little room.  Electricity, sewer and water are great!  But many parks may only have electricity, or water, and we are good with that if the feeling is right.  What we don't like are mega parks where you are parked cheek to cheek so to speak.  And we are not a fan of KOA kampgrounds.  They usually have lots of nice amenities, but they are geared towards kids, and are usually quite zoo-like.    So, after checking out the southern side of the Sawtooth area, we decided we will head north.  Not exactly what we planned, but, alas, we will adjust!  It may mean taking an interstate highway at some point in time...  who knows!  We expect to be off the grid for days at a time, so my blog posts may be scattered. 

Petit Lake south of Stanley

We have seen some interesting people on this trip.  This is a heavy off road paradise.  When you think of offroaders, you think of a younger crowd.  Not so here.  There are some reaaaal old folks on quads and you can tell they have broken some bones in their lives by the way they walk!  I look at us and think 'do we look like that?'

This weekend, there is a folk concert going on, so there are lots of people around.  We see 'no vacancy' signs on all the motels.  Stanley is a small town, and has been hit hard, economically due to the wildfires.  It is good to see so many people here to enjoy the concerts.

Did I mention it is getting pretty smoky?