Tuesday, August 16, 2016 Hot water soothes the savage beast

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Where is my maternal human going?  It is night time and we are supposed to go to bed together.  It is our special time.  Where is she going?  What about me?  I am here!  You can't leave me!  I will go sleep with my paternal human until she gets here.  What about me?

I slept outside last night.  I got out my banana chair, put my yoga mat on it and grabbed a sleeping bag.  It has been a long time since I have done this, but with the warm evening, and the safe environment, I thought I would give it a go.  The moon is almost full so the sky is bright but I can still see lots of stars.  This brings back so many fond memories of camping.  I drift off...  I am not sure how much I actually slept.  I kept waking and star watching.  I notice the moon was moving towards the mountains, and it was somewhat orange.  Ugh, that must be from the wildfire...  Tomorrow.  We will deal with that tomorrow.  It was daylight when I awoke.  I have no idea what time it was but based on morning events, I would wager to say it was about 5am.  The lake was calm (if I had a boat, I would be skiing by now!) and I could see smoke on the horizon.  It was cold, but I was comfy in my sleeping bag, not warm, but comfy.  I heard Spouse get up to go to the bathroom, so I gathered my stuff and went and crawled into bed with my two boys.  My feline furball was all over me.  We cuddled and when I got up again, it was all of 6 am.  It's the time change...

My old bug bites now have new bug bites to befriend.  Even some of my bug bites have their own bug bites.  You know when you find you have a bite and you scratch it... you know you shouldn't scratch it any more but it feels soooo good to scratch.  And you scratch, and scratch.  You dig, you go to the bone, you draw blood.  It looks like a crime scene but it feels so good to scratch... 

After some coffee and a walk, we readied Hannah.  Rudy really liked this place.  Spouse let him off the leash for some exploring.  He followed him closely and he stayed close by.  When he heard a noise, he ran to Hannah.

As we left, we drove past the golf course where we noticed they mowed the fairways!  ARGH!  A day too late!  And I see the ladies tees on the 4th hole now!  Oh well. 

We stopped at a ranger station to see if there were any road closures, and sure enough, the road we wanted to take to Lowman was closed due to the fire.  She gave us an alternative route that involved going over 70 miles of a gravel road.  I heard Hannah scream at that!  The other alternative was to go down to Boise and up hwy 21; which is the one for which we opted.

We continued down 55 through some beautiful canyons with the rushing Payette River.  Miles upon miles of relentless rapids coursed along the road.  When we passed the road we wanted to take, we saw the closure sign.  Guess we will have to do what we can do to enjoy the detour.  Since we had to go through Boise, might as well stop and get a part at Camping World.  Might as well do some grocery shopping, and eat lunch.  Rudy is getting cranky.  When we put him in Hannah while we ran errands, he hid under the bed and wouldn't come out.  We left him there while we went a mile to our next stop.  He was ready to come out after that!  It is already after 2 and we start on the journey towards the Sawtooth Area.

We hop on 21 north.  It is 125 miles to Stanley, but it is a mountain road.  As we start up, we smell the smoke.  There are signs about the fire activity and reduced visibility.  We pass Idaho City and the smoke worsens.  We see charred forest all round us and visible hot spots right off the road.  As we pass Lowman, we see an entire ridge up in flames across the canyon.  All the side roads and campgrounds are closed for miles. 

 After we pass Lowman, we see an occasional campground that has not been closed.  As we were passing the Bonneville campground, we remembered a guy we met last year who helped engineer some hot springs there so we turned in.  We are THE only people in the campground.  As Spouse pulls from one spot to the other, a tree grabbed Hannah.  At this point, Spouse was tired and cranky, and now he had to do some tree trimming to minimize the damage to the roof.  The tree sort of ripped at the rubber coating on the roof.  It isn't bad, but frustrating nonetheless.

It was about a half mile trek to the hot creek.  The scalding water flows down a pretty waterfall into the cold creek below.  Rock pools have been formed to funnel cold water into the hot pools to moderate the temperature.  Depending on where you are in the pool, it can be very hot, or very cold.  Since there was only the two of us, off came the clothes (ok bugs, total exposure for your entertainment!) and we got the prime locations in our respective pools.  This seemed to soothe the savage beast Spouse had become after his long day of driving.  There is even a bath house someone fashioned in an enclosure, with a tub.  It has a plug to actually fill the bath and pipes with the hot and cold water coming in.  Quite ingenious.

We hiked back to Hannah.  I would love to sleep outside again, but with the bear warning sign posted right next to our site, I think not!  But we are right on a creek that might require us to fish in the morning...

We notice chipmunks!  These are the first chipmunks we have seen on this trip!  None in Oregon, none up to now.  No wonder Rudy has had feelings of depression...  He is awake and ready to go now!