Weekend Spectacular

A few weeks ago I went into work late on Friday morning (they don't want me to go over my 40 hours so I work weird shifts) and as I was getting ready I kept thinking to myself, "What are we doing this weekend?" The answer, we had no plans. The solution: pile all of our camping gear and fishing poles in front of the door and put up a sign saying, "Let's go fishing!"

And so when I got home at 5 we loaded up the car and headed out to Celebration Park to set up camp. The think is we don't have any sort of all purpose vehicle since we got our new car and got rid of the Jeep. So there we are off-roading it in the Civic. It would have been just fine, had the road not washed out just enough so that the rocks were sticking out an extra 5 inches. Let's just say that the Civic is not the best all-terrain vehicle. But we had lots of fun. We did a morning hike up to a little lake called Lake Halverson. We had decided not to take our fishing poles--bad idea, there were tons of fish. So we watched them for a while and then started to head back. As we came up from a lake we saw a cotton tail rabbit and I was super excited and then all of a sudden a giant owl flew out from the tree just above me. I love owls, so it was pretty much the best thing ever. We also saw tons of lizards. Devin was telling me how when he was younger he would go lizard hunting and catch tons, so when we saw a lizard he set off after it. As it turns out he's not as quick as he once was so he wasn't quite able to catch it, but it was sure fun watching.

Lake Halverson. 

There were some awesome spider webs... and by awesome I mean absolutely disgusting.

Here's a little baby lizard.

Devin's going to chase a big lizard.

 We tried fishing the Snake down by our camp site but it wasn't yielding much so we headed over to Swan Falls right above the dam. It was so much fun. We waded out to this little island and fished for a few hours. Devin's first cast he caught the littlest fish yet this year. But there were bigger ones to come. I got several big ones, but the problem is that I get so excited when I get a bite that I get it half way in and it'll spit the hook. I guess I just need to practice more.

Devin's little baby fish... can you see him?

My big fish.

After we got back we went to one of Devin's work friend's wedding. It was up at a little barn in Hidden Springs. It was a real nice wedding. Since it was at this barn there were a bunch of chickens running around. I kept telling Devin that we needed to catch one so I could teach him how to make a chicken talk like how Kelsey taught me when we were little. He told me that he would only let me do it if I were 5 or if it wasn't a wedding. But then during dinner he turned the chickens in cannables. They fed us sandwiches and Devin fed a piece of his chicken to the chicken. I'm convinced that the one that ate the chicken was a little more agressive after the event.

This is the chicken that Devin turned into a cannibal. He ate right out of my hand. I almost caught it but.... it was a wedding and I had to behave properly.  

This last weekend was our last weekend before school started. We had planned a fishing trip, but Dakota and Dad McCleve were headed up near McCall to Boulder Lake and we decided to tag along. We found super cool hiking packs on Woot for $30 each and they came in on time so we decided to go for it. We hiked in 2 miles to the camp site. They had left a few hours earlier (you know with Dakota's scout troup) and Dad was calling about every 15 min on the way up there telling us that he didn't know if we'd be able to make it up the mountain by nightfall, and was being super worried. Needless to say we were fine. It was a great hike. It was beautiful and we found wild rasberries and huckleberries. The lake we camped by very pretty. There was a little strip of land that ran into the lake that you could go out on and see a panoramic view of the lake. Apparently it is typically underwater because there were tons of baby toads on the island and tadpols in the water right off of it. We had a great time (aside from the fact that the smaller sleeping bags that we had borrowed were no where near equiped for the 30 degree overight low) and I'm kind of excited to get into backpacking next summer. We just need to get sleeping bags...

This is the pretty lake we hiked to.

There were probably 7000 of these little buggers hopping around.

Fresh mountain raspberries.

And huckleberries.

He's foraging.

Before heading back home we stopped in McCall and had lunch. It was real nice, but not any place that I'd want to vacation if I weren't camping. Devin said that it's a lot more commericalized than it used to be. But I love the drive from Boise to McCall, it's right along the Payette River and the ride alone was worth it. I think there's even a people train that runs right along there too... maybe one day we'll have to take a ride.