Ok so we’re a little behind with blog posts, but we’re slowly catching up and already have the remaining blog posts in the works, so stay tuned! (You know, if you want… we’re not dictators… yet.)
Leaving Ketchum
Ketchum and the surrounding area is still our favourite part of our trip (spending time in SF with Donna and Jas was a very close second… but more on that in a later post), so leaving Ketchum was sad for us. If we could have, we would have stayed longer there. As it was, the best we could do was take the long (and scenic) route out. We know, we know, this whole scenic route thing is getting to be a habit, but it’s one we really enjoy, so we’re not at all worried about adding an hour or two to the drive to see a little more amazing scenery.
With this in mind, Nicole planned a less-than-direct route from Ketchum to Boise, Idaho, where we planned to stay for the night. Instead of going down highways and freeways, we went up into the mountains through Stanley, and then wound through said mountains before finally heading back down to Boise.
Google Maps showed the drive would only take 4 hours or so, so we took our time packing and loading the car that morning and left Ketchum around 10am.
Snow!
Even though we left a little later, there was still fog (or clouds, maybe?) shrouding the mountains as we wound through the gorgeous little town of Stanley and then further into the mountains.
We were a little bummed that the clouds blocked our view of the Sawtooth Mountains – so no photos of them for you – but that all changed when we rounded a corner and saw this…
Kurt had never seen snow before, so naturally we pulled over so he could explore. He poked at it, marvelled at the strangeness, and then threw a lovely icy ball of it at Nicole. (So charming, really.)
We were pretty chuffed we’d gotten to experience snow at all and got back onto the road thinking that was that. As we climbed higher into the mountains, though, it became clear that what we’d just seen was just the beginning. The higher we got, the more snow there was – we’re sure to locals it was nothing at all (barely a few inches, really), but for us it was pretty magical seeing footprint-capturing, ground-covering, still-falling snow.
Boise and the whoopsie drive
For this part of the trip, we hadn’t pre-booked accommodation. By all accounts, it’s a quiet time tourism-wise in America, so for days where we didn’t want to lock ourselves into a particular drive for the day, we had decided not to book in advance.
Turns out, that’s all well and good until a football game (or conference or something) books out every single hotel, motel and most of the AirBnBs in a city on the night you’d planned to stay there. We arrived in Boise, searched, and came up with… nothing.
So we got back on the road and figured we would stay at the next town. Except the next several towns have no accommodation at all (unless you count the horrible, you-might-get-murdered-there motel at one in the middle, which we DID NOT), and so on we drove all the way to Winnemucca, Nevada.
It ended up being a long driving day, but that didn’t end up being such a bad thing. Kurt drove, Nicole blog-posted, there was an awesome sunset, and then we saw some UFOs together. Not so bad at all. (We’re kidding about the UFOs – there were some very odd lights flying in the desert at one point, but we’re pretty sure they were US Air Force planes practicing night landings… Pretty sure. Maybe. Well, logically, that makes sense. We hope.)
The Marvellous Adventures of K&N 