Endeavoring to travel new roads we headed south from Coeur d'Alene on highway 95 aiming to stop at Grangeville, Idaho for the night. The drives through this part of the country never fail to impress us with great looking farms and forests all the way. We found that garbanzo beans apparently grow quite well around here. Grangeville is a tidy little town and the Bear Den RV resort just on the south side of town is very nice. It is relatively new and the folks that have recently taken over ownership are doing a real good job of the place. What a location! The sunset was incredible...
Perhaps even more incredible was the size of the truck and trailer in the spot beside us. The big truck, hauling the 5th wheel, was bigger than our wee trailer.
From Grangeville we kept heading south on highway 95 following the Salmon River valley which must be very good for fishing as we passed many places where folks had set up camp and were at the riverside checking their luck. The area is also very popular for wild rapid rides. The geological formations are also spectacular.
On this day we drove through the town of Payette, Idaho, the home of Major League Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew. Sweet!
We stayed 4 nights in Caldwell, Idaho. It is a bedroom community to Boise. We chose it because the Ambassador RV Park advertised a pool (seemed like the only one in the area doing so) and the pool did not disappoint... nor did the RV park for that matter. Very nicely kept and well looked after. An especially nice feature is the 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm adult swim time in the pool... no kids allowed in the pool area.
Thursday night we took in the local baseball team. Unfortunately we forgot our camera so have no pics from the game. In a way, that might be good. It was a bit brutal with a few too many errors and our old "home team mojo" from last year was way out of it's league. The home town Hawks fell 4-0 to the Yakima Bears. The Boise Hawks are a Class A team and play in the same league as the Spokane Indians and Vancouver Canadians, among others. Small ball parks with avid and seemingly very loyal fans (2,805 was last nights attendance). Lots of fun at these parks.
We thought we would have lunch out and were checking reviews for some of the local pizza places. One place, which shall remain un-named (let us just say that contrary to advertising, their pies failed to fly) had a lot of positive comments, but one sourpuss said it had the ambience of a biker bar and the pizza was bad. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and it was just one opinion. Sometimes the lone voice crying in the wilderness is the voice of truth. My (Kris) opinion was that if we had been as stoned as the lady working the cash register, we might have enjoyed the really bad pizza.
Friday we thought we would go to the Idaho Botanical Garden in Boise. Not so much luck. We got there only to discover that the garden was closed and being set up for a special event Friday night. Oh, well, we had a nice look around their lovely gift shop anyway. Since we are leaving the area on Saturday and the garden would take us about 60 miles out of our way, we decided it could wait for another time when we pass through this part of Idaho again. Afterwards we went to downtown Boise to the Basque District where we had a very nice lunch and paid a visit to the excellent Basque Museum. We had lunch at a distillery directly across the street from the museum, very good food and a great historic building fixed up very smartly.
Not much shopping to be had in Boise but Kris did purchase a very nice sweater at Macy's and we also picked up a small gift for the wee trailer...
Leaving Boise, we headed across the high country desert of south eastern Oregon to Burns. We stayed in Burns last year and ate at the Meat Hook restaurant where we decided to eat again. The decor has changed (the owner told us he took over ownership 2 years ago and the old owner allowed him to keep their decor for a year) which is a bit too bad because a lot of character has been lost. It looks a lot plainer now but the steaks were just as good as last year.
After a night in Burns we headed south to Lakeview where we stayed once again at the Juniper Reservoir RV park which is in a beautiful setting. It is a bit out of town but after setting up the trailer we drove back in to see if the geyser would put on a show for us. Last year it was dry so we missed out at that time. This time though, it sprang to life just as we drove up. It went off about every minute or so while we watched for a bit.
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