Two-day road trip on Idaho Scenic Byways

We started out before the crack of dawn on Sunday morning because I had planned a lot of driving for both days. We were headed to Wallace, Idaho for a big family celebration, and I wanted to see everything along the way. The crowd was unusually raucous on this trip, and three hours into it, TB got pulled over in Burley and reprimanded for not noticing that the cop was following him with lights on for a long slow mile. TB didn't bother explaining that the kids were yelling and he was starving and we had music on pretty loud and bikes blocking the rear view. We didn't get a ticket because the children are adorable and the parents seemed clueless and TB's infraction was quite minor.

We took the Thousand Springs Scenic Byway from Burley to Twin Falls and enjoyed the crops and barns and LOVED Shoshone Falls.

 We hiked about two miles around Dierke's Lake and spotted a lot of poison ivy, but we stayed away from it.

We followed Trip Advisor's advice to the best place to eat in Twin Falls, Buffalo Cafe, and were totally satisfied with breakfast at late lunchtime. We headed up the Payette River Scenic
Byway which was amazingly beautiful. At Horseshoe Bend, we saw the historical train come into the station, but our schedule and theirs didn't quite match up, so we'll have to ride it another day.

 We ooo'ed and ahhh'ed our way up western Idaho's flank and we thought that Cascade Lake was beautiful and the Payette River looked a little too exciting to raft, but St. Joe's River seemed perfect. We pulled into the Super 8 in McCall just in time to drop off our stuff and head into town to eat at Lardo's Grill. You can always count on this small, old Western towns to have lots of railroad history and interesting photographs on the wall. McCall is a cute resort town and we'll definitely come back some time. In the morning, we visited a fun playground on the edge of Payette Lake.

We drove through more beautiful country criss-crossed with big rivers and surrounded by cliffs and huge trees. Lots of interesting bridges and trestles. We took a portion of the Northwest Passage Scenic Byway from Grangeville to Orofino. We turned off on the Old Cavendish Highway because I had read that it was like driving through European farm land. It was a lot of farm land on really steep topography and a windy road with a steep grade. It really was beautiful.

 We took a piece of the White Pine Scenic Byway, and I'd planned to drive part of Lake Coeur d'Alene Scenic Byway and do a hike, but that was too much for one day, considering we'd been in the car for seven hours by then, and we still had about an hour before Wallace and this part of the state is inexplicably in the Pacific Time Zone so we were more tired that the clock said we should be. We were able to stop at Old Mission State Park in Cataldo. There is a lot of Native American history with the Jesuits who built a mission here. It was interesting a beautiful.

The mission is the oldest standing building in Idaho and it's impressive. The Jesuits faux-painted the altar to make it look like marble and stained the ceiling panels with huckleberries to make them a really pretty color of blue. They made metal chandeliers with the tin cans from their rations. 

Jovie shows us her black eye that is a result of a collision with Ikey just before we left. It got more purple and green as our trip progressed.

The parish house is our favorite color of blue.

Ikey took a portrait of our family. I'm carrying Jovie like a sack of potatoes, as requested and in honor of our trip through Idaho.

This is Ikey's first selfie. He's a cutie!

I really love planning and doing road trips, but we need more time! This trip could have been done in four nights instead of one. There are a lot of things to see and do in the Gem State. Once TB is over his compulsion to work, we'll do it again in a slower style.