Road Trip 2019 Day 4: Leah’s Day

Day 4 - 25 June 2019

This day was designated as my day because we started in the city of my birth and we planned on searching out Leah’s Lake in the afternoon. Our alarm went off at 7am. I managed to post Day 2 of the blog this morning right away. We eventually got going, had our leftover pizza before we left the hotel room, grabbed a light breakfast from the hotel, and were on the road at 9:08 am. Our first stop was the bridge we had found the night before. My parents gave us super specific guidance about what we were looking for......”A train tressel in Idaho Falls”.....ok, no problem. Well, I think we found the right one, but unfortunately, no initials. So we put ours on it! Maybe some day I’ll send Charlotte in search of it with equally vague direction. I will give my folks the benefit of the doubt, it was about 36 years ago, so I guess I can’t fault them for not having more specific detail. I can barely remember last week. 

After the bridge, we went in search of the spot where I was born. We had done some research before our trip and learned that the hospital I was born in had been demolished in about 1986 or 1987 and an LDS church was on the site. Sure enough, we made it to the location and found a church right where expected. There was an LDS temple in the background too. Across the street from the church was a little brick memorial with some images and a plaque describing the hospital that used to be at that location. That memorial was made of the bricks from the hospital! Pretty neat to find. I never thought I would make it back to Idaho Falls, so it was fun to see even though the hospital was gone. That was our final business in Idaho Fallls, so off to our next stop: The Idaho Potato Museum!

We got to the museum a little after 10am. We took our photo out front with the giant potato and headed into the world of tubers. The museum is small and looks like it used to be an old train depot. We spent about an hour marveling at the history and fun facts about tasty tubers. Ross and I even had a Mr. Potato Head car race. After we made it through the museum, we had to eat some potatoes. We ordered some French fries. There were two people working and one of them was a boy about 16 years old. At one point he needed to change the name of the soup of the day. The other guy told him it was “Chicken A la king” This is what went up on the board: “Chicken All A King.” We were giggling and just let it be. I have no idea if it got changed. After our snack, we went back into the gift shop. I had to get another ornament. The bag that it came in was a little potato sack and came with a free pouch of instant potatoes. Pretty awesome!

Now it was time to head towards Alturas Lake outside of Ketchum, ID for our hike to search for Leah Lake. But of course, there was one more side quest along the way. We passed right by Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, so we had to stop. Once again, our National Parks pass saved us $20 to get in. We spent about 20 minutes exploring the cool rock and lava formations. We may have picked up a rock for Meem to add to her collection. Ok, for real, we headed for our big stop of the day.

We finally arrived at the Alturas Lake Trail Head, within the Sawtooth Mountains, at 3:15pm. Our best guess was that it would be a 2 hour hike to the lake. The Alturas Lake trail did not go all the way to the lake, so we planned on some off road hiking. Sure enough, about 3 miles into our hike, the trail disappeared. Ross was now in charge of leading us to Leah Lake. Every once in a while we found a sign of a trail and some cairns to mark the way. We were definitely “off road.” At one point we had to cross a river by walking carefully over a fallen tree. It was pretty awesome. 

As we hiked farther and farther into the Sawtooth wilderness and farther away from civilization we were beginning to realize Leah Lake might be out of our grasp. There was this very high and quickly approaching mountain ridge in front of us. Even though we did not have cell service, the GPS on our phones still worked. Ross was guiding us with the iPhone google map. We were following one fork of a river that may have been fed from Leah Lake and it led us up the mountain ridge to a wonderful waterfall.  

Such Views!

We hiked about a third of the way up the ridge in front of us. It got real steep real quick. We knew that Leah Lake was on the other side of the ridge, but because of what time it was, we would not be able to get there because of the approaching darkness. Neither of us was at all disappointed! The views were spectacular and we were the only ones around. 
I’m glad Ross was the voice of reason. I think I was willing to hike a little higher, but the sun was starting to set and we definitely did not want to be out on the trail in the dark. We had only encountered one other person and his dog within the first mile of our hike and that was it. We were totally alone the rest of our hike. It was the complete opposite of Yellowstone and we both loved it 100 times more. Our hike ended up being 4 hours and about 8 miles long. 

View from our highest point

Despite not finding Leah Lake this time, we know that even though this was our first attempt, this won’t be our last. We’ll find you Leah Lake!

What a Hike!

My Garmin's Map of the Hike

Ross said he would drive a little while to get us out of the mountains, but the mountains never.ended. We switched driving after a little while and drove the rest of the way to Star, ID; which is just outside of Boise. We saw so many deer and a few elk on our drive. And unless you’ve driven out here, it’s hard to describe how the mountains never end. It’s just one mountain range after another. They just never end. Driving switchbacks and really curvy roads in the dark isn’t my favorite thing to do, I’ll tell you what!  But in the day time, the views are spectacular and something we’re definitely not accustomed to at home. Even though I wanted Ross to drive through the Iron Mountain pass at Mount Rushmore, I think I’ve done more mountain pass driving that he has so far. Just luck of the draw! 

Finally, we made it to our Air BnB in Star, ID. From what we could tell in the dark, it was in a very affluent town. All the homes were quite impressive. Our Air BnB was in a renovated space above a garage. We never met our hosts as it was a self-check in and we arrive after 11pm. It was a great space and very affordable. Another day done! We look forward to what the next day will bring!

Stats

Miles driven: 222

Steps taken: 25,362

Miles walked: 12.3

Miles Hiked: 7.9

Hours ‘lost’ in the wild: 4

Deer and Elk along the drive: Too many to count