Aargh! Oh, the title of this post suggests some kind of trauma when it is merely annoyance and conundrum. Yesterday morning I off-loaded three photos of the Smiley-Guy to brighten his parents' day at work. Immediately following, the video card in my digital camera developed some kind of tick or something and it won't let me off-load the pictures I took this past weekend. I'll carry it into Walgreens and see if I have better luck there, but I think they are irretrievable.
Anyway, Glenn and I took our little tent-on-wheels to Craters of the Moon National Park last weekend for three nights. Craters is an unusual park (well, aren't they all?) in that it is thousands of acres of ancient lava debris. The campground itself features only a handful of trees and the sites are carved out of spaces between the lava rocks. It's a very transient park; most visitors stay one night and move on. Our three-night stay is atypical for there.
We chose Craters because of its location. We'd been there once before during a day trip, we believe it was 2003 the first year Meghan and Josh moved to Idaho. We wanted to see the park again, but it also provided a good jumping off point for our exploration of surrounding areas. The primary goal beyond camping was to scout out fishing locations.
We spent many hours driving about dirt roads (sometimes two-tracks) in search of fishing spots as well as potential camping sites for future trips. We fly-fished at least one location each day. Of note:
Silver Creek. This beautiful trout stream runs roughly parallel to US20 south of Gannett, ID. Besides the fish, its claim to fame is that it was frequented by author Ernest Hemingway. In fact, his family donated several hundred acres along the stream to the Nature Conservancy to preserve as a trout fishing stream. We saw many grand fish here. I caught, but did not land, a really nice one. Glenn landed a couple. In this area, however, it is barbless hooks -- catch and release only. The kind of spot you fish only for the thrill of it, not for dinner.
Little Wood River. On Sunday, we drove to see the Little Wood Reservoir and continued up the road. The area is north of US20 and east of Gannett. At any rate, we stopped by the river, saw an interesting spot and decided to give it 10 or 15 minutes. Three hours later, we possessed three keeper trout, enough for our meal Sunday evening. (Note -- I actually took a photo of Glenn sitting down to our first trout dinner, caught solely fly fishing! Aargh again!)
Added note -- during this stop, I achieved a first in my personal fly-fishing career. I caught, reeled in, netted and landed my first trout using a nymph! He was delicious!
Other fishing related items. Sigh. At one stop the combination of wind and fairly fast-moving water meant that I also caught my own pants leg three or four times. At one point, I was struggling with getting my fly unsnagged from my trouser leg and fish were jumping behind me!
Friday evening we attended a ranger presentation the subject of which was the role Craters Park played in the Apollo missions to the moon. Coincidentally, the ranger mentioned the International Space Station would be orbiting over the park later that evening, so we stayed up to watch it. As I mentioned, Craters has very few trees, so the expanse of sky visible is enormous. We watched the ISS for nearly five minutes, an awesome sight! (We've seen it once before, from the beach on Lake Huron several summers ago.)
We enjoyed our weekend a great deal, despite missing the little Smiley-Guy. Great weather, good fishing and fun exploring our newly adopted state. We're not sure when we'll be camping again, but this was a good trip.
BTW -- We now have spent 285 nights in the camper since purchasing it in the spring of 1998. Our per-night investment is down to $21.75! What a deal!
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