30B430 #19 Part 4

I was in the mood for some adventure so headed out early one Saturday morning for the Owyhees. I was joined by the Flock sisters, who had their own stories of hikes and adventures out in the Owyhees but since I had already been to Jump Creek several times, I was looking for something different. This time, I was headed to Leslie Gulch and a canyon hike I had found online. The drive to Leslie Gulch was a bit deceiving- twenty miles outside Marsing on the highway were easy, peasy, but twenty miles on terrible gravel roads that looked paved were certainly were not, took a lot longer. There were moments where I almost felt like we were hydroplaning if we were exactly in the same tracks of the cars that had come in front of me.

Leslie Gulch was beautiful- there were some wild flowers, sage brush, small evergreens, but also huge massive rock formations that glowed red in the sunshine and reminded me of the tors in Dartmoor. The goal was to try and find this canyon and while it didn’t quite work out (even with me running ahead for a little while), we got to do some rock scrambling and some hiking over formations. It certainly wasn’t a strenuous hike in the slightest, with slight up and down hills but it was stunningly high-desert beautiful and I was able to do a little bit of recon to see about some future camping trips to the area. It was very different from my excursion out to Shaffer Butte a few months before but in it’s own way, it was still gorgeous, especially when the sun came out from behind the clouds.

Only one more new place in Idaho and I’ll have this checked off! Any recommendations?
 

30B430 #15

I’ve spent nine summers in Idaho and have yet to float the Boise River. Knowing I’d need something big to make it happen, I put it on my list. I have beautiful memories of floating the Fresno River with the Junior High kids on their retreat but I knew that this one would take a bit of coordination. Cindi and Ariel joined me and we met up at Kathryn Albertson Park to carpool to Barber Park. We had a slight mishap with the raft the Godwins lent me (namely that we were missing a cap for one of the sections) so we ended up renting tubes instead.

The float was incredibly relaxing. There were times where I’d have to try and paddle to either speed up or slow down to float alongside Cindi and Ariel and by the end of the day, my forearms were chaffed and pretty painful for the next few days. But that was later. The day of, the float was beautiful- the day was just perfect, the water wasn’t too cold and the sun was warm. And I didn’t get sunburned, which was really the plan all along. Because it was Tour de Fat in Ann Morrison Park, there was hardly anyone on the river. We did catch up at one point to a Bachelor Party of guys on a few rafts and kayaks and luckily we were able to get past them when they pulled off to use one of the porta-potties alongside the green-belt. I could easily have floated all day long, especially if I had more water that didn’t get dunked in the river during one of the little rapid dips. The nice part about renting from Barber Park is that they will pick up your tubes for you and all we needed to do was drive ourselves back up to the park to get the cars. We stopped at Blue Sky Bagels on the way since we were starving but certainly relaxed from the float. I’m so glad that there were so few people on the river, that it wasn’t busy at all, that we were able to rent tubes last minute, that the friends I floated with got along even though they hadn’t met before, and that I got to check something off my list while enjoying a relaxing day in the sun. I definitely would float the river again- I know what to do and what not to do now!