This past week, I piggybacked a short trip onto a business trip out to Boise. Prior to the trip, I’d been to nearly every state in the continental us (44), and this trip allowed me to grab three I haven’t been to before. (ID, MT, WY)
Day 1 Boise to Jackson WY
After arriving in Boise at about 2 pm, I grabbed a rental car and headed straight west towards Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Google had the drive at about 7 hours, but it took closer to 5.5 with all the flat straight roads. The first 4 hours we’re pretty bland, but the last hour made up for it. Driving along the snake river and from Idaho Falls to Jackson Hole even though it was spitting rain for most of the trip.
I grabbed some dinner at the Snake River Brewery and a cheap room to get an early start up to Grand Teton and a fairly long (12 hr) hike up to the top. The weather gods didn’t agree….
Day 2 Jackson to Idaho Falls via Yellowstone –
I woke up at about 6 am and hit the road to towards Grand Teton. I planned to hike the Paintbrush Canyon route but unfortunately it was 36 degrees and raining, not ideal conditions for an overnight hike. The overcast skies made Teton unviewable from canyon, so I decided to head straight to Yellowstone hoping the weather would open up a bit along the way. The road between the two turned bad pretty quick, but I was able to make it up and back down the divide without indecent. While in yellowstone the rain/snow continued to build, so after checking out old faithful and a couple other hotspots I headed of the park to West Yellowstone with the idea of staying there overnight and hitting up yellowstone and teton again the next day. The weather did not cooperate once again……
In West Yellowstone, I stopped for a drink and some late lunch, and found that a winter storm was headed directly for me ( 10+ inches for all areas about 6k ft.) The rental car handled well, but not quite that well…. so I decided to head back south to Idaho Falls for the night.
Day 3 Idaho Falls to Idaho City via Sun Valley.
While I drove a ton on the trip, the drive to Sun Valley was amazing. Single lane road, plains on the left; mountains on the right, zero traffic to be found. After a long day of driving a found a great camp site about 50 miles outside of Boise at 8,000 ft. When camping, cold is much better than wet, so I was happy to find a spot above the snow line.
Day 4 Idaho City to Boise
The cold woke me up at about 7 am, so I packed up and heading into Boise and to my hotel for meetings and the like. After our meetings we were lucky enough to be able to to hit up a game at Boise State, blue turf and all… a perfect cap to the trip.