Idaho

Very soon after arriving in Moscow, Susannah and Adam drove Katherine and I down to Placerville to Adam's parents' cabin there for a fun weekend.

This was a pretty view on our way up to Placerville.

While in Placerville we had a good time shooting this BB gun for some target practice. Well, most of us shot at targets - Vic got a few chipmunks.

After some shooting and playing around the cabin, we hopped on the 4-wheelers for a little exploring adventure of this mining area. It was really cool and had some awesome old buildings. They were really run down inside. The road to get up there was super gnarly so I was glad I didn't have to be a driver.

It was fun being together with these friends again. Kirsten came up from UT to meet us in Placerville. I hadn't seen her for about a year!

We did some poses by this huge building. I'm not sure what it was used for, but it was pretty impressive.

Kirsten's poses were hilarious. That girl cracks me up!

I thought this stream was so pretty.

After exploring, we gave our feet a rest. The only problem here was the flies! There were tons and they really liked us.

Vic had to come back and help fix the 4-wheeler so we could all make it back to the cabin. He rode this cool motorcycle up there.

Susannah and Kirsten headed up a smaller road to see if there was anything else of note, but came up empty.

Kirsten and I really enjoyed taking turns in this hammock.

Our next excursion of the day was a quick trip to the Payette River for some fun in the water. This area had hot springs too. The water was REALLY cold.

Here's cute pregnant Susannah just starting to show.

I love this picture. It was Adam's idea to go swimming, and he's the only one who did. The rest of us just got our feet wet. He didn't actually swim, though. It's more like he just submerged himself a few times to cool off.

We found a good swimming spot in the river, but right near the bank, hot water from the springs was bubbling up through the sand. It looked and felt so cool.

Katherine spent most of her time in this hot spring. The water was really hot and it was almost 100 degrees outside too. Not sure how she does it!

Here's our master griller, Vic! He and Deej did such a great job of keeping us fed. The food was amazing!

Saturday morning we went on an awesome 4-wheeler/motorcycle ride for a few hours.

Katherine was super brave and rode this 125 dirt bike around. She did a great job and got a major workout because it's a kick-start bike and it kept dying. Look at those guns!

My cousin Desiree and her husband Kurt joined our group late Friday night. They were a lot of fun and we wish they could have been there the whole time.

This trail that we went on was amazing. It was so narrow and there was lots of vegetation. We also had to go over little streams about 6 times which added to the fun. Desiree had my camera and got tons of the back of me, but I though this showed the trail pretty well.

Susannah got the most dusty of all of us. She was in the very back on the back of the ATV that Kirsten was driving. It had a super short back end too.

She looked like she had gray hair and I really wish you could see how dirty her face was.

On Saturday the main mountain road up to Placerville was closed for a rally car race. We went out and watched it that afternoon. It was cool to see them drift and drive a whole lot faster on that dirt road than we ever would.

Vic decided to get a closer look at the rally cars. I was fine staying back from the road away from all that dust!

Katherine was cracking us all up. When we were all sitting in the shade, she was always out in the sun. That may explain why she's a good ten times (at least) darker than any of us.

We're just relaxing and watching those rally cars while recovering from our fun 4-wheeler rides.

This is the crew minus Vic and Deej who were being our photographers. We had to get a picture in front of the cabin with old Chief Clubfoot.

Saturday night, we all went to the Starlight Mountain Theater to watch a musical production of The Scarlet Pimpernel which is one of my favorites. During the intermission, the actors get out and sell concessions. This guy was HILARIOUS. He and one other guy were selling licorice ropes - well, it was kisses for $1 and licorice for free. Kirsten got in on that action real quick. She gave the licorice to Adam.

The guy was shouting out to everyone that if he sold all of his licorice, he do a trick. Well, it worked and I got his trick on film.

On the drive back to Moscow from Placerville we stopped to see some of the rapids. We were lucky enough to see some kayakers go down these class 4 rapids, then we saw some rafts. This raft ran up on a big boulder, corrected, then went up on another and capsized. Everyone was thrown out. All the passengers went down the river - ok I think. The guide quickly swam to the opposite bank and clearly had a hurt arm. This is a picture of two guys trying to free the raft. The guy in the yellow green shirt - not sure how he got out there, but he was out there the longest. The other guy in blue kayaked out to him. That raft was really being held in place by the rapids.

This is a video I shot of them finally freeing the raft. It took a long time and a lot of effort, but they did it. I was impressed with how tough that raft was and also how tough those guys were!

After the raft was free, those two guys had to get off the rock and back to shore. This guy on the body board thingy tried to get out to them but with no luck.

The way they got off was pretty impressive. I tried to upload this the normal way but with no luck. I put it in youtube and did it from there! Enjoy!

Once back to Moscow, Susannah and Adam took me to a cool look-out called Kamiak Butte. It was an amazing view of a lot of the rolling hills in the area.

This is a view from the top of the Butte. It was really pretty. None of my pictures really do it justice, so if you want to see the true beauty, just look up "Palouse" on Google images.

Here's the happy couple trying to smile at the summit in the bright sunlight.

I was really excited that Susannah pointed out some wild raspberries that were growing along the trail. We picked a few and ate them! Delicious!