Whazoos' first Idahome summer camping, all thumbs are up!

It was our first summer living in Idaho and the camping was just what we'd hoped, it was famndamtastic! Did I mention water? There is water enough to make a desert dawg go aquanuts!

And most every night we camped we had quadrophonic running water, there's no better way to sleep if you ask me. In a total of 15 summer nights camping we spent just one night away from water, and that was because we wanted a view from here to yonder.

Before I start posting pictures I wanted to speak for a minute about a growing problem, getting old. Not so much the whole aspect of getting old, just two issues at the moment. One is the losing of filters, the orally uttered variety. In the last few years things just seem to...pop-out. Five minutes later and even I am wondering where those things came from. It has been mentioned to me that with age comes a reversal in the direction of thought process and speaking. Instead of thoughts forming in the brain and make their way to the mouth, words now start in the rear, skip the brain and head for the mouth, making for a very self-flatulating Whazoo. Now I don't really know what self-flatulating means butt I think it stinks when a guy feels like whipping hisself for words that are no longer his, do women has this issue also? I am thinking of giving classes in something I've had to learn to do, apologize sincerely. It seems that as of now I have more issues than Scott has tissues, I'll apologize up front and call it being proactive.

The other issue I'm grappling with are brows, the eye variety. Yes there are other body parts sprouting hair as fast as it leaves me head, the nose and ears mainly. But the brows are getting the best of me. With nose and ears you stick in that little electric dumaflatche whirling and sounding like a high speed chain saw cutting saplings yet doing a very nice job of things. Unless of course the battery dies while yanking out the hair it's supposed to be cutting painlessly. However if you mess up trimming the brows it's pretty obvious.

  I figure if I let them go wild they may get caught up in the stratosphere with my friend Jefe's brow-rug and the jet stream would cause a hairy nuclear winter scenario in the eastern U.S.

  At the same time as so many of us guys are getting older we'll have new meanings to old terms. I can see me now, cruising Home Depot isles with unruly brow hairs catching, intertwining and yanking things off the shelves. A young employee approaches and asks if I need help? "No thanks young person, why I'm just browsing."

  Or watching the evening news and seeing a bruised up young person being helped up off the sidewalk. The reporter asks what happened and the young person replies, "I was just brow-beat by an old man that could hardly walk!" (That be me)

  And while young guys have their bromances, us old guys will have our browmances.

  Well I'll let you take it from here, just don't ask me to update my browser. (?)

So much for getting old, like these trip reports, they can hardly stand on their own anymore.  And look, I have no story to tell about these trips. Well just some snippets I guess. But I'm trying to figure out how to take pictures of something besides the open desert. Bear with me please.

I've heard how well dryer sheets work for insect repellent, as well as toilet paper. Ok not so much the TP, could you tell I was joking? Hey maybe not! Butt I thought on one trip I would try it out, the repellent I mean. Mrs. Whazoo abstained. Well I do have one picture that would get me killed to show. She was quite fetching in dryer sheets.

Lo and behold it worked very well, look at them skeeters! I will say the strong oder of all those sheets has quite ruined my sense of smell and I now have a serious dislike for clean clothes.

As a side thought I now have the perfect remedy for those clueless campers that come right up next to you to camp after you have the perfect spot and you're all set up. No picture, yet lol, but just imagine...an ol guy (that looks a little like Whazoo) with a tin foil hat, dryer sheets stuffed all over his body, and a cup of koolaid. "Welcome friends, we've been waiting for you to join our harmonic convergence. Do get out and have some koolaid!" Would you get out? There you have it, I rest my case.

There is one downside I should mention, they do attract another kind of pest that could bruin a vacation.

My dog would protect us I know.

I've heard that Idaho has no beaches, I beg to differ. "We" have a million beaches.

Yes, Duke is my step-dog.

Lil Bailey likes to hang out under the truck and practice her mathematics. This trip she was into differentials but it was over her head.   (Was that a boo?)

It seemed all the butterflies liked to hang out near camp. Maybe the water had a magical quality to it.

Duke too, likes Idahome.

 Ah, but he does catch trout!

Oh good gosh, Duke drank the butterfly water! This is what happens when you take an iPhone pano while your dog stays in the frame.

From the movie "A Road Runs Through It"

Yes I kiss all the girls.

The Salmon River north of Stanley. I hate to say it, yes I do, but in a pinch Idaho has the best camping along the highways and rivers of anyplace I've ever been. Even for those of us who like the boondocks these places can be a perfect place to spend the night.

The Salmon River is in the darkness to the right of the fence. Not a great picture for sure.

But it sets up the next photoshop pic.

The awesome Sawtooth Mountains!

We couldn't believe it, a singing bluebird! Of course the song, "May the bluebird of paradise fly up your nose, and an elephant caress you with his toes." What, you haven't heard that song? Google it my friend hah.

What can I tell you, I was a squatter for a moment. It was tough too, getting up from that position.

Next up was the River Of No Return. After Stanley, Idaho, the main Salmon River dips into the Frank Church Wilderness. And what a wilderness it is as we just briefly touched it.

This was the raft ramp to let your boat into the river. Thought we'd give it a try but at the last minute remembered I didn't have life jackets and had to pull it back up. Do you believe that?

It is amazing to see what man has done to help nature, this being a fish ladder of sorts to help them around the rapids there.

Then we found a place right off the road that had a sign. I was hoping to not be toad.

I heard a sound and looked down, it was weird let me tell you. Well you had to be there. I didn't know if it was a bull frog or a horny toad but I didn't want to try and catch it and cook it. Can you imagine trying to pull that dude's legs off and throw em in a pan? The story at the ER would be that you were gored by a bullfrogs horns while trying to pull his legs off to cook them. Wait...what?

The dogs were quite reflective about this new camp spot.

Besides strange bullfrogs there were elk in the distance. I wished I had a longer lens, they are incredible animals to see.

A thunder storm settled in for a while and added to the magic of this place.

Evening was a gorgeous affair. There was a bridge over the river with hundreds of birds and their mud nests on the underside of the structure. Their sounds were cacophonous yet harmonious, (Wait, I don't know what that means.) and the entire flock would fly high and come swooping down and under the bridge so fast it sounded like standing in the middle lane of the freeway as they came out the other side and back up again, making me swallow as I watched. It must be what they do for fun, or maybe they're playing chicken with the bridge.

During the dark of late evening we kept hearing this jurassic park kind of sound but couldn't see what animal was making it. Loud and spooky it was, sounding like a dinosaur. The only animal we had seen larger than birds and bullfrogs close to camp where cranes of some sort. To later find that they were sandhill cranes and their noises are out of this world to hear.

Come morning there was a very cool fog bank along the hills, we could barely see the elk still there feeding.

Àndale, àndale, there are more camp spots to see, sì?

Tho Duke seems to like the back seat.

Duke has severe anxiety when we move on and is beside himself with energy.

We drove by this guy and I yelled out the window "I like foie gras"! See what I mean? A total lack of filters from my aging mouth. I eggretted it immediately but it wasn't herron me, it was a sandhill crane.

Meanwhile, camping on the western side of the state...

We had a hike to make...

To this little emerald of a lake in the high mountains.

The mountains had a ruddy red color to them that from a distance we thought were rocks. What a surprise to find such color in the death of a bush.

We saw several of these birds and Mrs. Whazoo asked me what you call more than one grouse. I answered in my know-it-all Whazoo voice, "That would be grouses Dear." Or would that be grice?

Our first view of Hells Canyon and the Snake River that separates Idaho from Oregon. We had a bit of signal here and found the our phones had us on Oregon time yet we were on the Idaho side. And we call them smart phones?

We found the perfect Christmas tree only to discover that there were about a dozen trees all packed in and growing into what looked like one tree.

While not a good picture of this tree, it was as big around on top as the trunk at bottom making for a very sturdy tree. At the same time it was half as dead as alive. That used to amaze me until of years I hit sixty years old. Now I see half dead half alive every morning in the mirror.

We were truckouflaged in the trees. It was the beginning of bow season and you never know who'd be hunting a big Outfitter.

Our shack of sit looking over Hells Canyon.

I could see Oregon from my house.

Thanks for reading...The Whazoo's from Idahome

And remember, don't drink the water...

PS. I just finished reading a book on the war of 1812 that was very interesting. The second American revolution it seems. Dolly Madison who was President Madison's wife, was smart enough to save a portrait of George Washington from the White House while it was being pillaged and burned by the British. All these years I've been eating Dolly Madison little baked cakes not realizing that she was also a real smart cookie.