Roadtrip 2019 – Idaho: 7/11-7/16 – Working on Exploring

Heading where?

From Twinfalls area we headed north to the Sawtooth mountain area. Simply looking to get some quiet camping, hiking, and water time with the kayak for a few days.

Drive up through Shoshone area

The trip from Jerome, ID to just north of Ketchum was a short drive for us and allowed time to stop at the Shoshone Ice Caves

Not quite as dramatic as I was expecting but interesting none the less a good introduction to the volcanic activity of this basin. We set forth to go hunt for our next home base.

Camping

Sawtooth National recreation area and FR146 campsite review. Our GPS coordinates: 43.83710, -114.42072

About 3.8 miles from I-75 we found a dispersed site right next to the creek. Very level and although we were closer to the road than we wanted you’d never notice any road noise. Road was fairly rocky making driving slow (no drive by dusters) but was quiet or quieter than the fast moving creek.

Night one with us finally getting out of the 97 degree heat we fired up the oven and made a sausage mushroom pizza. We caught sight of a red fox carrying a squirrel on the other side of the road (Turned out that was the most wildlife we would encounter). Thoroughly enjoyed sleeping next to the creek.

Zero cell signal. If you stay off meadow near forest service center there was 3-4 bars Verizon; 0 AT&T and T-Mobile service. Dump station ($5) also just past the forest center office along with drinking water. Not much sun in this particular site for solar but there’s many options up here and there were about 4-5 more sites past ours.

Multiple hiking trails off of this road to enjoy. We ventured up the trail at the end of this forest road the next day.

Hiking

Kayak Outing

Where we camped had a lot of water all in the river which was too fast and held many obstacles for kayaking. We headed deeper into Sawtooth Forest and over the Galena Pass to an area dotted with many lakes. The biggest is Redfish Lake (last 2 pictures) and was our final destination but I picked a closer one to check out first, Alturas Lake. We ended up paddling around Alturas Lake which was great and a better choice in the end. Enjoyed paddling around the end of the lake and found our own patch of sand to dock and enjoy lunch.