Autumn Begins

A visit to Charlie's Gardens on a day full of blossoms and bees.

Lillies at Charlie's gardens.

Montbretia ("Lucifer") at Charlie's gardens.

Lavender with a flurry of bee activity.

We went up to Tamarack Resort to see construction progress and a live band.

It was their Beer & Bluegrass festival.  We didn't stay long but relished seeing people there.

We went to the last few live music concerts in town also.

Our the porch remained a haven for us.

I painted the edges of these metal flowers that we hung at our condo to be able to bring the framed flower photograph to our townhome to enjoy.  

One of our first longer hikes was the East Fork of the Lake Fork River Trail.  Flat, scenic, awesome!

I started bringing some potted flowers in for the nights during the early frosts.

Never a shortage of beautiful bouquets at our home.

I got new lenses in my old glasses and was thrilled to see so well! 

The porch flowers, especially the impatiens, held in late in the fall.

Gorgeous as can be!

I hung some Private Property signs on our property to deter trespassers, who typically leave empty beer cans all over the place.  Mostly they're ATV users in the summer and snowmobilers in the winter.

Dave and I did some elevation measurements to plan our work for the sewer line excavation.

We used this basic rise over run method that Dave had learned.

And one day we rented survey equipment and tested his measurements: Spot On!

We took our nightly walks by the lake to enjoy the sunsets.

And then it came time to celebrate our Anniversary!  Woohoo!  So we stayed a night at the Lowman yurts we'd celebrated our anniversary before.  We played scrabble on the porch again.

We were rewarded with the most beautiful rainbows on the morning we left.

And enjoyed fantastic pizza at the bar where the rental check in desk is located.

The incredible Mountain View from these Lowman yurts.

One of the best parts of staying there is the Kirkham Hot Springs across the road.  Numerous pools by the river and also near the parking lot.

After that first night's stay, we continued on the unpaved road to Atlanta, Idaho.

It's a magical small town with the Sawtooth mountains as a backdrop.  Only one place to eat.

We walked around town while we waited for the one restaurant to open.

I had booked our stay at the Atlanta Forest Service Cabin in the beginning of the year.  It's incredible to be able to rent a historic cabin, for only $35, with such incredible views and regular home amenities.

We flew our drone to get a better view of the mountains and the valley between us and them.

One of the draws is the numerous hot springs in the area.  This one is the Atlanta Hot Springs which we had to ourselves.

We actually soaked twice that day.  Once at the Atlanta Hot Springs and afterward at the Chattanooga Hot Springs also nearby, where we had that pool to ourselves also.

Dave tried the waters our first.

The incredible view!

We got a clear and sunny day the next morning, so we flew our drone to get a closer look at the mountains nearby.

And then we went on a hike in the Sawtooth Wilderness.  I was so excited to be out hiking again!

Incredible views on our hike.

What a joy to be outside in such a sunny locale.

The drive back to Boise and then home afforded incredible vistas as well.  This was the road from Atlanta over a mountain pass to the next one restaurant town, where we had lunch.

Meanwhile, the cold temperatures in McCall had caused the huckleberry shrubs to turn color.

This was a hike we took Ponderosa State Park.

I joined Emily and her dog Eddy for a hike up to Josephine Lake.  

Incredible views and so great to be outside and hiking again!

Wildflowers in blossom at Rotary Park in McCall on Payette Lake

Dave and I were doing prep work on our property on West Mountain Road.  We put free firewood rounds out for people to take because we had too much to store.

We also rented a U-Haul and took a lot of the scraps that we didn't get mulched to the dump.

The result was a magnificent forest.

It was clean and fire resistant as Dave had planned.

This one has some of the signage that I hung.

And this photo shows the lower area where Dave had spread the mulch that he made.

Nice and sunny now that he limbed up the trees!

This is what the trips to the dump looked like. 

Our flycatcher plant went into blossom this fall!  And it's inside a cup our friend Matt Ulsh made for us.

Dave took me to see the red huckleberry shrubs at his mountain bike riding area.

Truly magnificent!

Beautiful colors this year, although almost no huckleberries this year during harvest.

On another hike and drone flight mission we drove up Warren Wagon Road.  This is the colorful Secesh Summit.

We decided to hike the Loon Lake Trail since it had been over 10 years that we'd done it.

There were beautiful autumn colors along the way!

The aspens were golden!

And huckleberry leaves bright red.

The views were just as grand as we had remembered.

It was exciting to be on such a long full day hike.

This is Loon Lake.

From there, we took an overgrown, unkempt path to the historic plane crash site.

Just as awesome as we had remembered, although people had carved their names in over the years.

So awesome to be back.

The sun came out on our return hike to the car where we ran into an old Tamarack friend.

We stayed the weekend at Burgdorf Hot Springs with our friends Sean, Emily, Colin and Delta.

Joyfully, we've been making this a yearly full-time tradition.  We had a blast as usual.  Even played bocce ball with Colin & Delta.

We hiked a bit along the Loon Lake Trail on the other side of the loop to see the fall colors.

Dave was almost camouflaged in his yellow jacket.  We were also seeing if it would be a reasonable hike to take the Rethinger family on the following week when they came to visit us.

Unbelievable sighting of a pileated woodpecker in downtown McCall!!!

I was blown away to see one so incredibly close and unafraid!

Dave with Eddy (Sean and Emily's dog).  Early autumn was sheer joy for us as we were hiking in the mountains for the first time, witnessing the glorious color changes, preparing for our excavation work on our property and a visit from Dave's college friend Mike Rethinger and his family, and celebrating the colder temperatures which in our neck of the woods translates to Hot Springs!  

Idaho August

 

August was rich in flowers! This one was in the art garden by My Father's Place.

We bought some tobacco flowers to keep the deer away from our other plants. Grandma used to grow these out front at their Amador Way home, and I remember the hummingbirds loving them!

This was an especially colorful sunset on one of our evening walks by the lake.

That same walk on our way home.  This is our condo building caught in the magic light.

A selfie with a Ponderosa pine in Ponderosa State Park.  This was my first hike since the surgery, on the shorter easy marsh trail.  It was fantastic to be out in nature again!

This was a bit of the trail.

The lake, boats and beautiful skies!  Usually our fire season starts in early August. Last year it was in late June, so we were thankful for every blue sky day we had.

Dave drilled our old espresso pot to make it a vase for me.  It's so cute!

The impatiens near our front door.

We saw this gigantic hibiscus blossom on a walk in the North End in Boise.

This is one of our patio flower pots.

Flower pots and sunset view from the patio.

Another amazing sunset on our evening walk.

August blossoms in Charlie's Gardens (which we visited often).

Dave in the Gardens.

One of my favorite flowering shrubs there.

We visited the classic wooden boat show by the Hotel McCall before going to an outdoor concert.

Our impatiens.

Dave finished the backboard earlier in our guest bedroom and in August we cleaned it up for a guest, my friend Grace from Caldwell.

Enjoying the lake view after our walk to the State Park from our home.

When Grace came to visit, we hiked the longer marsh loop in the state park before having lunch at the Alpine Pantry with Dave.

The following day we went to the Donnelly Huckleberry Festival, historic Roseberry and Tamarack Resort's outdoor patio for lunch.

Grace took this photo of us making dinner.

This was an outdoor jazz concert we went to with Grace after the pizza dinner.  The stage has the lake as the backdrop.  It's a great place to be in the summer and we can often hear the music from our home.

My favorite part of August was the steady hummingbird visitors to our feeder on the porch.  Mesmerizing!

The new rocks that the city put in at Brown Park.  One of my favorite walks is along the lake to this area.

A Western Tanager on a tree on one of our walks (yellow bird with an orange head).

Summer joy!

The huckleberry season wasn't great this year because there were very few to be found everywhere we went.

Another beautiful walk.

A walk down to Payette River to see the fish and view from the bridge.

Dave's Fire-Wise Grant's deadline for work was the end of August, so he spent mornings cutting branches and thinning trees.  Then one day we had a chipper delivered to mulch as much of it as possible.

These piles are what Dave worked through as I stood nearby as a safety watch and brought him food. 

You can see Dave feeding the chipper in this picture.

And in this one you can see the chipper shooting out a bit of ground wood.

Here is the sign that got placed on our property.  Basically, Dave applied for the grant and got it!  So he had two Forest Service agents come out to help him decide what to do to make our property more safe in case of a wildfire.  He did that work, then we recently got a check in the mail that covered the chipper's cost.  But now our land is beautiful compared to the others nearby and we have a good feeling that it will be safer than before in case of a man-made or wildfire.

We celebrated by eating on the top of the roof at the Salmon River Brewery and enjoying the peace and view.

The picture above is the wildfire that broke out somewhat close to our property, on the west mountains from a lightning strike.  Firefighters battled it for a long time before finally being able to contain it.  We had lots of other fires also, so Dave's hard work gave us a sense of perfect timing.

We had a beautiful August!  It flew by too quickly as they always do.  Love you!