The ultimate mission of our Idaho trip was to get tattooed by Darcy Nutt at Chalice Tattoo Studio in Boise, Idaho. Since it takes 15 hours to get there, we decided to make a mini vacation of it and go camping somewhere in the Sawtooth National Forest. The south entrance of the Sawtooth National Forest is past a small town called Ketchum in Idaho in what is called Sun Valley (the home of Aston and Demi).
We loosely mapped out our itinerary on google with Ketchum as the first milestone and decided that we would stop where ever we saw anything odd or interesting. We left on Wednesday evening at 8pm with the intention that we would arrive at the campsite during the day around 1pm vs. at night, where setting up camp is a pain in the a**hole. Below are some pictures highlighting our trip.
I recently purchased a Jetta Sportwagen TDI which was awesome because it only took 2 tanks to get to Ketchum.
On scenic highway 75 we saw an blue “cave” sign and rock faces that guided us to one of Idaho’s lava ice caves. We later learned that this particular ice cave called “Mammoth Cave” was the hillbilly version of some of the more put together ice cave attractions in the area. Lucky us! We were greeted by a young man with a Deliverance disposition and a drawl sounding more native to the Ozarks than to Idaho. He sat at the entrance of a large circular building 100 feet in diameter called the “Shoshone Bird Museum of Natural History”. Really, this building was a collection of dusty taxidermy that included at least one of every animal on the planet. The self guided tour started with the ice caves and was then followed by a walk around the “Museum.” He handed us two propane lanterns and pointed a dirty finger toward a path that led to the cave.
I knew I would have some trouble going all the way to the end of the cave as it was a fifteen minute walk in pure darkness with only the light of a lantern that barely lit up the path a few feet ahead of me. The moment the cave entrance light was almost gone, I felt an eerie heaviness of cold and ghostly darkness. It occurred to me that the only things that were missing (or at least I thought they were missing) in the “Museum” were humans and this cave was cold enough to preserve human flesh for however long. I walked a bit further until I got flashbacks of the people eating cave dwellers in The Decent and turned my ass the hell around. I later found out the cave is haunted.
A few hours later, we reached Ketchum which instantly reminded me of Laguna Beach but in the mountains. The treelined historic streets and buildings hugged high end outdoor clothing stores, free trade coffee houses and boutique grocery markets. Residents loaded their pretty children and pure bred border collies into their luxury SUV’s. The comfort of familiarity was disarming. It should be noted that Ernest Hemingway committed suicide in Ketchum, we found his grave.
We found a great and I mean great campsite called Caribou in the Sawtooth National Forest. A small river ran behind our tent about 75 feet away, there were only 7 campsites, it was quiet and near some of the most amazing hiking trails I have seen. Most importantly, we did not get attacked by bears, which meant that I did not have to use any of my counter Cylon bear defense skills that I learned at BSG Camp last summer. Did you know that you are supposed to fight a black bear and play dead with a brown “grizzly” bear? Okay, here’s a bear joke, get ready…
Signs warn hikers to wear tiny bells on their shoes and carry pepper spray to first warn bears of human presence, and then to deflect an attack.
Q. How can you tell the difference between black bear scat and brown bear scat?
A. Black bear droppings are smaller and often contain berries, leaves, and possibly bits of fur. Grizzly bear droppings are larger and tend to contain small bells and smell of pepper.
And now to Boise… I love Boise, it is amazing. Everyone rides a bike, the neighborhoods are filled with historical affordable houses, most restaurants use local ingredients, people are friendly and ambitious, and the town resonates with artistic and business creativity reminiscent of downtown LA 10 years ago. We stayed at The Modern Hotel as we did the last time we were in Boise and it was just as awesome. The Modern has a great cocktail list, clean and modern rooms and wonderful cost effective design. We also met up with Juliana at Bricolage which is a great new store in Boise that carries a little bit of everything from independent designers, including themselves. In fact, they just ordered some Pedaler (see Noel modeling Pedaler in the Bricolage store).
Its almost done! Our 15 hour drive back home could have been very boring but instead, the entire drive was on the verge of a thunderstorm which made for damn good pictures. My pictures end with my favorite tapas restaurant which happens to be in Las Vegas (right on the way home) called Firefly. What you see is an almond stuffed date wrapped in bacon in a red wine reduction topped with blue cheese crumbles.
Oh and thank you Howard Stern for helping us through the boring flat parts of the drive and getting Gerard Butler to tell us how big his weener is.
