7/30: Idaho

We woke up, reheated curry for breakfast, and packed up to leave. Good riddance. I chatted up a small boy child and a grandma to discover this was the Wassenbach yearly campout. Great for them, they seemed to be having a bang-up time, but terrible for two non-Wassenbachians camping in their midst through no fault of their own! Good riddance. 

We stopped on the way down the mountain to swim in a wonderful little swimming hole. There was some waterfall type feature and then a deep hole that would have been perfect for swimming had the water not been about 45*F. We braved it anyways though since it had been about five days since out last proper shower and the pits were a little rank, even for a couple of dirty hippies. It was great! We even halfway bucket showered with our Dr. Bronners, using our bucket and moving an acceptable distance from the stream. Clean hairs, ahhh.

Then Robert drove us into Idaho. We were heading to a city called Lowell. The scenery was amazing. Driving up a fertile valley, great trees, wide river, not sure of it's name because we were off the map at this point, but I enjoyed windows down, clean hairs getting all tangled to shit, and decent music blaring. (it was roberts iPod, recovered at long last from the depths of the back seat) 

We got to Lowell and...drove right through it without realizing. It was basically a gas station (thankfully.  we were cruising on empty since we didn't heed the "no gas for 62 miles" sign). We stopped and I borrowed the attendants paper to read more about the most recent yellowstone bear incident, got myself all into a tither because it was a predatory attack at a campsite that we would have stayed at had it not been full. I mean, we stopped, pulled into the campsite, drove around and were disappointed so we had to drive on. A few days later and a few fewer tourists and we would have been there. Disconcerting to say the least. 

We drove up the road, following the Selway River at this point and it was a treat to see. Lots of people camping, but also lots of people swimming in the river. Legit swimming, tubing even! Maybe this river was warm enough to actually enjoy. Robert pulled off and the water isn't warm, but it doesn't seem too bad either. We will certainly try out a few of the deep swimming holes we passed tomorrow. People seemed to be camping at random along the bank, but we scoped out the official sites and decided on a 5$/night site. It's annoying because it isn't anything special compared to the free sites, but it is getting late and it's five stinking bucks. 

Dinner of stir fried veggies (whatever we had left: book choy, onion, garlic and zuke). We also did chow mien noodles and the whole thing turned out smashingly. We were quite excited when we first got out of the car because there wasn't a swarm of skeeters waiting for us; however, we slowly noticed these minuscule biting gnats. After dinner, we started itching more and more as we were getting bit on top of our already considerable welts and imagining even more! We retired to the tent and here we lay. 

Now. Do I return the pad to the car or just sleep on top of it?....