Last week I spent a few days in the middle of the Idaho. It's an annual trip and it's always planned well in advance. Mostly, it's a fishing extravaganza. My best fishing buddy, Mikey Taylor, my yellow lab, Champ, and I camp in the same place every year and explore different high mountain lakes and streams in the Payette National Forest.

Last year we took this trip in August. It was hot. There is something disturbing about 95 degree weather above 7000 feet. What's up with that. The fish were hard to find. They had to go deep to get out of the heat. And with that much heat the water wasn't retaining enough oxygen. So the fish weren't active at all. We decided to move our trip to September. We got away from the heat. In fact, it was almost too cold this year.

Well, anyway, it wasn't much of a fishing trip this year. The first day we had planned a bike trip back to Loon lake. There is a World War II airplane that crashed in Loon. It's still there and it is a well-known attraction. But in all my trips to Idaho, I've never been to Loon. This was to be the year. It's 6 miles from the trailhead to Loon. At lest that's what we thought.

It turns out that there are two trails leading to Loon. The route from the Chinook camp ground is six miles. The route from Ruby Meadows is more like 11. We inadvertently started at Ruby Meadows. 4.2 miles into the ride we came to a fork in the path. A sign pointed left to Loon. "6 miles." I stared at the sign, looked at Mikey and then back to the sign. What happened? We expected it to be less than two miles.

The path turned into single track. We traveled on another mile and a half. We descended three hundred feet. We didn't have a lunch or enough water. I was worried about Champ. So we turned around.

Later that day we fished a small stream and caught several dozen small brook trout. It was fun. Although it wasn't what we had expected. I was a little disappointed.

The rest of the trip wasn't any more productive. The second day was lost to looking for three new lakes. Mikey had been talking to a friend at the local fish hatchery. It seemed promising and turned out to be a bust.

The third day was very cold. We hiked to deep lake. I forgot my float tube. Mikey fished for a couple of hours and I stayed on shore with Champ. Fishing was only mildly successful for Mikey and non-existent for me.

Champ was limping on the trail coming back from Deep. I checked his paws and they were pretty beat up. On the fourth day we stayed on camp and relaxed. I didn't want the situation with Champ to get any worse.

It wasn't a very good fishing trip. I did ride my bike every day and enjoyed that. We spent time in the evenings fishing in the meadow in a small, meandering stream. And we ate a lot of good food. Why is it that food cooked over a campfire tastes so good? And why is it that something as simple as camping out in the mountains, far from civilization, seems so civilized and carefree?........
10:30:43 PM    comment []