Rocks and Birds and Friends
The Minnie rocks like a boat as soon as the wind gets over 25mph. When we first moved in it was unnerving but has become kind of soothing, which is a good thing given how windy it has been here today. Some friends have a sheep ranch at the base of the mountains and have generously let us camp here for the weekend. It’s a beautiful place with no end of interesting things to see and do, but we’ve spent most of the weekend simply watching the northern harriers soar and dive. We’ve never seen them in such huge numbers. They are majestic as they dive and glide among the hills and fields, making full use of the howling winds to move themselves along.
Lisa has been focused on a consulting project this week so I’ve gotten to dust off my running shoes and explore. I hadn’t driven the Minnie on my own yet, so I was nervous when I dropped her off on Thursday, but I couldn’t pass up a perfect fall day and the plethora of accessible trails in Sun Valley. I haven’t run much this summer, preferring to hike with Lisa. I ended up running the Fox Creek Loop, seven miles and 1000 feet of elevation gain, through meadows and forests along a river and several creeks. As I flew down one hill through a meadow, I was transported back to cross country races in college in New England; only the burning of my lungs in the thin 6000ft air and the snow-capped high peaks in the distance brought me back to this place.
We’ve spent a lot of time in this part of Idaho, but have mostly stayed in the towns of the Wood River Valley, so its been nice to explore some different places on this trip. We spent a few nights camped among the sage and silence of Silver Creek. It was pouring rain most of our stay, but we’ve done a lot this summer so we were happy to slow down and be still for a of couple days. One night we simply sat in the dark and watched a distant storm for almost an hour. It was completely silent where we were, no thunder, but we could see sheets of lightning passing through the clouds. Total magic.
This morning we headed a few miles down the road from the ranch to explore the lava fields of Craters of the Moon National Monument. With the exception of the sage and limber pine trees, the landscape looks much like Hawaii, dotted with cinder cones and draped with miles of black basalt lava flows, some only 2500 years old. It was eerie and fascinating.
Last week, some dear old friends kindly let us camp in their driveway while we were in town, and it was great to catch up with them. Their daughter was tremendously excited about the RV and asked if she could be our first overnight house guest! She was a fantastic first guest and now has designs on her parents acquiring one. We head back to town for tomorrow, as Lisa has two more days of work before we fly south like geese in search of warmer weather.
