Long Valley Drive

The aptly-named Long Valley is over 42 miles long, and only about 6 miles wide at its widest.  We could not stop taking pictures of this beautiful valley near our campground in the Payette National Forest.  The highlight was discovering No Business Lookout, which we would have never discovered had we not been encouraged by a geocache... one of the biggest benefits to geocaching is finding some of the amazing places that you'd never stumble upon on your own!

Looking north from No Business Lookout towards Lake Payette and McCall on the north end of Long Valley.  According to the profile below, the lookout is about 2500 feet in elevation above the valley floor, which makes for a most impressive view!

 Views

There were lots of panoramic opportunites.  Here are a few that we stitched together:


Looking West from No Business Lookout towards Council Mountain



Looking South from No Business Lookout towards Cascade Lake



Long Valley Panorama

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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 is provided by GPS Visualizer.

Coordinates and other details

Mileage:  Time:  Average Speed:

88.7 Miles 05:00:05 18 Miles/Hr.

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.

Kennally Creek Hike

In our Idaho camping guide book, we found a really cool campground nestled in the Payette National Forest.  At the campground, a trailhead begins along the Kennally Creek, which was swollen with snow run-off during our visit.  A five-mile round trip hike through dense forest, by grassy meadows, over slithering snakes (*gulp*) and the cascading creek. We were away from everyone (we literally came across nobody!) made for a very enjoyable hike.  By the way, while leading the group, it was Raymond who stepped right over the racer snake before he realized what it was.  He got himself out of there in a flash, and was  freaked out for a while.  We even found a geocache way out along the trail, and it had only been partially-eaten by some curious critter who found it before we did.

Kids take a moment to enjoy the rushing North Fork of the Kennally Creek as they stand on the bridge along the trail.

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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 is provided by GPS Visualizer.

Coordinates and other details

Mileage:  Time:  Average Speed:  Trailhead Coordinates:

5.1 Miles 03:23:09 1.5 Miles/Hr. N 44 46.870, W 115 52.451

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.

Payette River Scenic Byway (North)

While we had already driven the Southern section of the byway several times, we haven't explored or recorded the northern half of it very much, so we wanted to make a page dedicated to the entire drive.  The northern half is very beautiful as it winds through the Payette National Forest, right along the rapidly flowing North Fork of the Payette River, which is considered by some experts to be one of the most challenging river reaches in North America, if not the world.  We took quite a few pictures of the entire camping trip that can be seen here.  

Rafters prepare for rapids along the North Fork of the Payette 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 is provided by GPS Visualizer.

Coordinates and other details

Mileage:  Time:  Average Speed:

108 Miles 02:16:02 48 Miles/Hr.

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.

Eagle Greenbelt Geocaching

Before getting too hot on Saturday morning, we went to the Boise River Greenbelt and hunted for more geocaches, while enjoying a stroll along the river.  It still got pretty warm even by noon, when we had got back to the car after our 2.6 mile hike... however,  we were glad we got out early when we saw the mercury hit the century mark later in the day.

Boise River view from the Greenbelt in Eagle, Idaho.

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Geocaches Attempted

	At The Beginning	Found
	Rainbow Series #1	Found
	Rainbow Series #2 Somewhere Over the Rainbow...	Found
	Rainbow Series #3	Missed
	Rainbow Series #4	Found
	Rainbow Series #5	Missed
	Rainbow Series #6	Found
	Rainbow Series #7	Skipped
	Rainbow Series #8 - The End of the Rainbow	Missed

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

Time Profile

Since this was a relatively flat stroll along the river, an elevation profile is meaningless.  However, we thought that a time profile might be interesting.  In this profile, the steeper parts of the curve are where we were going much slower, or were stopped altogether.  The red portions, for the most part, are where we were hunting for geocaches.  By the time we got to the end of the greenbelt, you can see that we returned without doing nearly as much stopping.


This profile is provided by GPS Visualizer

Coordinates and other details

Mileage:  Time:  Average Speed:  Trailhead Coordinates:

2.6 Miles 2:06:26 1.2 MPH "Geocaches Attempted" links above contain coordinates

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.

Rocky Canyon Geocaching

After a ward campout near Idaho City, we decided to take do some geocaching along a scenic route home.  We were favored with great weather and a list of ten geocaches in our GPS.  We had our most productive geocaching ever, having found nine caches in a single day.  And the tenth, we simply passed by because it was in a public park, and didn't want to draw attention to the cache. 

View from Boise Ridge looking towards Robie Creek and Lucky Peak State Park

Geocaches Attempted

	"E" Gas	Found
	'Snow Way Thru	Found
	Aldape Raptors	Found
	Dusty Rhodes	Found
	Grayback Gulch	Found
	James' Foothills Cache	Found
	Rocky Canyon 1	Found
	Rocky Canyon Road cache	Found
	Rooney's Robie	Skipped
	Wrong Way to Robie Creek	Found

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

The elevation profile conveys three different main coloring schemes.  

• Blue/Purple: highway travel.  
• Green/Yellow: dirt road travel
• Red/Orange: walking (while finding geocache... as you can tell, there were some calf-burning slopes to climb for some of these.)

This profile is provided by GPS Visualizer

Coordinates and other details

Mileage:  Time:  Average Speed:  Trailhead Coordinates:

36.4 Miles 4:16:26 9 MPH "Geocaches Attempted" links above contain coordinates

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.

Boise Greenbelt Walk

Well, the weather is improving nicely, and so we took advantage of the Mothers' Day weekend to talk a stroll along the Boise River Greenbelt between Ann Morrison Park and Julia Davis Park, with Boise State University along the way.  We also took the opportunity to stop by the Idaho Ann Frank Human Rights Memorial for a few minutes... something we haven't seen since moving to Boise.  Turns out, we weren't the only ones with the idea.  Cyclists, joggers, skateboarders, roller bladers, and strollers like ourselves were out in force.

Boise River Greenbelt at the NW 0.3 marker (as seen in the white circle in the bottom left of the picture)

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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

Time Profile 

This profile shows our relative rate of travel.  Steeper portions of the curve are slower.  For example, the steep light blue curve shows the 10 minutes that we stopped at the Anne Frank memorial.

This profile is provided by GPS Visualizer

Coordinates and other details

Mileage:  Time:  Average Speed:  Trailhead Coordinates:

2.0 Miles 1:10:06 1.7 Miles/Hr. N 43 36.730, W 116 13.065

 
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.

Military Reserve Geocaching

 

Adjacent to downtown Boise sits an old Military Reserve.  Now reserved as a city park, it offers nearly 500 acres of excellent mountain biking, hiking, and views of Boise, the Treasure Valley, and the Owyhee Mountain range on the other side of the valley.  Mike took the kids up during an early spring weekend to do some geocaching as well.

Downtown Boise from Elephant Rock Loop Trail

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GPS Info

We collected all of the following data from our GPS unit during the adventure.  Since this track is a mixed hiking/driving map, colors are used to indicate speed.  Red and orange sections denote hiking, whereas blue and green colors depict driving through the park to get from one cache to another.

Maps

This Google Map is provided by GPS Visualizer

Elevation Profile

This profile is provided by GPS Visualizer

Coordinates and other details

Mileage:  Time:  Average Speed:  Trailhead Coordinates:

4.3 Miles 1:50:30 2 Miles/Hr. (mixed driving/hiking) Refer to individual geocache pages above for coordinates to each cache.

 
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.