Boise River Float

One of the most popular summer family activity in Boise is to float the Boise River.  It's a peaceful stretch of the river, with a couple of fast sections the kids loved.  We even got stuck on some rocks at one point. The stretch of the river from Barber Park to Julia Davis Park is about 6 miles, and it took us exactly two hours to complete it.  We split up each hour-long leg with a picnic lunch at one of the rest stops along the river.

The kids loved floating down the Boise River

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GPS Info

We collected all of the following data from our GPS unit during the adventure:

Maps

This Google Map is provided by GPS Visualizer

Elevation Profile

This profile s provided by GPS Visualizer

Coordinates and other details

Mileage:   Time: Average Speed: Put-in Coordinates:

6.1 Miles 2:03:39 3 Miles per Hour N 43 34.076, W 116 08.070

 
If you would like to use this info with your GPS unit, the full GPX file is here.
If you want to view this in Google Earth, you can download the KMZ files of the track and topographic overlay.

Sawtooth National Recreation Area

Sometimes, you don't need to travel far from home to have a wonderful vacation.  One of our shortest-travelled vacations ever also turned out to be one of our most impressive. While it is just 135 miles from our home to our campsite in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA), the last 110 miles of it follow three of Idaho's Scenic Byways.  It was certainly one of the most spectacular destinations we've enjoyed in all of our years of vacations.  We took lots of photos to remember it by.

This is a map of our vacation courtesy GPS Visualizer.

Highlights

We certainly did pack in plenty of activities in our six nights of camping!

• Scenic Byways:
• Payette River
• Wildlife Canyon
• Ponderosa Pines
• Salmon River
• National Forests
• Boise
• Sawtooth
• Salmon-Challis
• Lakes
• Stanley
• Redfish
• Little Redfish
  
•  Rivers
• Boise
  
• Payette
• North Fork
• Sourth Fork
• Middle Fork
  
• Salmon
• Middle Fork
• Yankee Fork
• Deadwood
• Drives (GPS Tracks on map above)
• Nip and Tuck Road
• Dagger Falls
• Yankee Fork
• Jordan Creek
• Elk Mountain
• Hikes (GPS Tracks on map above)

Location	Distance (miles)	Elevation Gain (feet)
Fishhook Meadow	6.7	360
Elk Meadow	4.3	125
Valley of Giants	1.3	200
Lily Pond	1.0	150
Redfish Creek Falls	0.6	140
TOTALS	13.9	975

• Geocaches
• Found!!!
  
• Stanley's Cache
• Elk Creek
  
• Attempted
• Be Centered
• Boot Hill
• Lucky Boy
• Stanley State Coin Exchanage
  
• Flooded Trail
• Stanley Lake Creek #1
• Stanley Lake Creek #2
• Stanley's Rocks
  
• Ghost Towns/Cemetaries
• Bonanza, ID
• Custer City, ID
• Boot Hill
  

Lowlights 

No, it wasn't the perfect vacation, as there were some downsides to it along the way, but it certainly was one of our more enjoyable vacations ever!  The camping was relaxing enough and the scenary superb enough to deal with the following less-than-ideal situations.

• Mosquitos, mosquitos, and more mosquitos.  The repellent just didn't turn these guys away!
• A couple of days of rain kept us off the trailhead
• Early season obstacles (flooding, trees across roads) kept us away from some geocaches, hikes, and drives that we were interested in.
  

Favorites

Here's what each family member said was their absolute favorite activity of the trip:

• Trent:  The Shuttle Boat on Redfish Lake
• Raymond:  Throwing Rocks in Lake Stanley
• Amelia:  Redfish Creek Falls
• Suzanne:   Fishhook Meadow Hike
• Mike:  Valley of the Giants Hike

Takeaways

Some final thoughts from our vacation:

• The Sawtooth Mountains truly live up to their name.  With several jagged peaks above 10,000 feet, these are some truly impressive mountains
• The Stanley Lake Campground that we stayed at presented us with the most impressive view we've ever had of any campground we've stayed at.
  
• The area also boasted several large mountain meadows, containing lush grasses and filled with early summer wildflowers.
• Every river, creek, and stream was swollen beyond normal measure due to the abnormally large snows this winter, and the rapidly warming
  
• It was fun to find a couple of geocaches, but we learned to not always trust our GPS!
• The history along the Custer Motorway presented us with a rich and enjoyable history of the area.  It was an unplanned, and unexpected delight to our trip.
• 200+ photos from our digital camera can't possibly lies