Living Life On the Edge with Stan and Mel: Our summer trip to Idaho

We planned a week long trip to Idaho at the end of July to spend time with family and to go backpacking. Mom and Dad were super nice and watched Scott for a few days while we went off and adventured in the mountains.

We did our usual evening drive to Monticello, Utah and stayed an inn there before finishing the drive the next morning. Scott was pretty funny the morning we woke up in the inn and we had trouble keeping him a little calm while we had bagels and cream cheese for breakfast. He was getting cream cheese everywhere! The best was that it looked like he had a goatee of cream cheese:

He was too hyper for me to get a better/closer picture.

We got to Idaho Friday mid-day and were able to spend the weekend with all of our siblings and family there. We are grateful that those who live closer make an effort to come when we can make it because we love being with them!

Celebrating Dad's birthday

We went in together to get Dad a croquet set and the grandkids loved playing with it

We had a BBQ with Grandma and Grandpa, Jerre and Shannon and family, and us

Scott loved having a slide right in the house to play with!

Tuesday morning, Stan and I set out for our backpacking adventure. We got to our spot to hike out by Josephus Lake midday and got all packed up.

Josephus Lake, we didn't stop here but did have to take a picture

And off we went! It was a beautiful day with fun flowers and bright sun shining.

Proof that I was actually hiking

Lots of the forest at the very beginning was burned but not too much. The sign to head to Helldiver lake. The bottom sign direction is where we come back from in a few days.

Helldiver Lake, a beautiful spot with not a single fish :( At least we didn't see any and none wanted to bite, so on we went!

We hiked up to an unnamed lake and busy finding a spot to set up and making dinner.

Dinner in the works (that black jetboil on the left there) against the lake. It was a beautiful evening.

And then we fished. And the fish LOVED us. We pretty much were catching a fish on every cast.

And this is where we decided to set up our little camp.

The next morning we got going and headed out. Our goal was to hike a few miles to Cutthroat lake.

We saw this little guy on our way

Stan looking out over the scenery.

We passed this lake and it was beautiful.

And it had this outlet leaving it.

And we kept hiking. But then we decided that we wanted to spend less time hiking and more time fishing, so we turned around and went back to that lake.

Stan setting up his gear

And there were lots of beautiful eager fish here too! They had such vibrant colors

A panorama of where we spent our day. It was so peaceful and we only had one group pass by so we felt like we got our solitude.

This is the view of the opposite way from where I was standing in the picture above. The forest was so gorgeous up here!

We headed back to our unnamed lake camp spot to catch some fish for dinner.

Cooking the fish over our fire

Yum dinner!

There were two funny things that happened this evening/night. We were getting things ready for night which included filling up our water pouches. As I picked Stan's up, I noticed he had these dark slug looking things in his water bladder hose. I told him to come over and we were thinking they were leeches! We spent a good 15 minutes thinking how we could kill these things and worrying how long they had been there when Stan took the hose off and tried just emptying out the water and they came straight out. They were just little sticks!

The second happened shortly after we climbed into bed. I had just fallen asleep and Stan woke me up terrified that there was a bear outside our tent! We could hear snorting and pawing around as well as heavy footsteps. We realized we had both left our bear spray in our packs outside of our tent! Stan finally went to get out of the tent and found a deer. Phew!

The last morning we got up and packed up then went to fish the once more in the unnamed lake.

If you look close into the water here you can see the school of fish that had followed Stan's line in. It was a race to see who would get to jump at the lure. There were always at least three other fish following the one being reeled in.

And then we headed out into uncharted territory, making our own trail like we tend to do. Our destination was a high mountain lake.

Following my leader

We were getting close!

Same view as what is behind us in the picture above. That's Josephus lake down there.

And then we crazily hiked along this....

But it led to this! It was one of the most beautiful lakes I have ever been to!

Stan fishing

I had had my fill of fishing, and didn't want to accidentally kill any, because that may have happened the previous day, so I enjoyed the sun and peaceful quiet.

I love this man!

We got back to our car safe and sound and headed out. We stopped in Stanley, Idaho for some dinner at a pizza place called Sawtooth Luces. It was pretty good and was interesting pizzas, not your normal pepperoni and cheese flavors.

Scott had lots of fun with Grandma and Grandpa while we were gone. We are so grateful to them for letting us have this fun adventure before baby #2 comes. It was so fun to just be in the mountains, and while we missed Scott, we decided it was so nice to not have to worry about his safety, sleeping schedule, and feeding him.