Life is All About Memories

I decided that one of the reasons we are here living on this earth is to create memories. How boring would life be without those happy, funny, sad, scary, proud moments in our lives? And without important people to share them with? Beki and I certainly made memories together this weekend!

Beki and I had been planning to hike Mt. Borah this weekend for what seems like forever. Unfortunately, everyone in our group dropped out, but we still wanted to do something to fill our weekend. I plotted a trip for us to explore the touristy areas in south-central Idaho, and we set out Friday night after work.

The trip started out well. Beki and I jammed out to music as we made the 2 1/2 hour trip westward. As we got to Shoshone, and saw that the ice caves were only 16 miles away (the first stop I had planned for Saturday morning), I started to worry. Where the heck were we going to camp? All I could see for miles and miles was flat, sagebrush covered land. I guess I should have already been a little leery when I googled "shoshone ice caves camping" and nothing came up... but the website did say the caves were near the Sawtooth National Forest, so I thought we wouldn't have any problems finding a camping spot. Beki and I joked about which sagebrush plant we wanted to camp by. A few miles past the caves, though, we saw a sign for Magic Reservoir, and it had several pictures indicating the amenities, including a boat and an RV. Perfect - we decided if there was a place for RVs, then we could definitely camp at the reservoir.

Shortly after we got to the reservoir, we eyed a spot up on a hill that looked like a campsite. As we were driving along the road to the site, we laughed because the GPS showed us driving on water. We were completely on dry land! We even took a picture because we thought it was funny. Well, less than a minute after taking the picture, we were stuck in the mud - where did that mud come from??? Guess it wasn't as dry as we thought (come to find out later, the area we were driving on was covered with water only two weeks ago!).

Beki and I were resourceful and pulled out our camping shovels to dig out the mud and placed some wood under our tires in an effort to get unstuck. No such luck. A few minutes later, a man came walking by - he said he was stuck just on the other side of the hill. We all decided to walk to town (a mile or so away) to see if we could get help. Beki grabbed the shrimp and brownies she had brought us for dinner to take into town in case we got hungry... only the shrimp juice spilled in her purse all over the brownies so we had shrimp-flavored brownies! Not the tastiest thing you've ever eaten. You probably had to be there, but it was pretty hilarious :-)

We didn't even make it all the way to town before a couple men (one in a truck, one on a four-wheeler) from town came out to see if they could help us. They said they had been watching us the entire time from their telescope (Beki had already decided before this that we were in part of a horror movie, and this only solidified her concerns)! The men said people get stuck out there all the time. To make a long story short, the truck that tried to help us out got stuck (you seriously got stuck in like an inch and a half of mud), and two more trucks of people and another four-wheeler came out with rope and chains and we were finally successfully pulled out of the mud. I think the entire town of West Magic was there enjoying the show! We drove up to the higher ground where we saw the campsite two hours after we arrived at the reservoir!

Beki and I had a great night laughing and laughing about the adventure we had had and talked about the nice people of West Magic who spent their Friday night helping us for free (thanks Jim, Jerry, Mike, Heather, Gordon, and Varmit!). We ate dinner and made smores and were happy there was a bathroom right by our campsite :-)

The next morning we took a couple pictures before we headed out for our next set of adventures.

The leftover mud on my Blazer

See - I told you we were driving on a "road"!

Next stop was a private guided tour of the Shoshone Ice Caves (it's amazing how the cave can stay so cold in the middle of the desert!) followed by a self-tour of the Mammoth Cave. We were given lanterns to take through the Mammoth Cave - which was 50 feet high and 50 feet wide in some places... It was so gigantic - I wished there wasn't a designated path because I would have loved to explore the rest of the cave!

The final stop on our adventure was the Little City of Rocks (which I had a hard time finding and almost turned around about 100 feet before the entrance - so glad I didn't!). Beki and I had a blast climbing all over the rocks. We even named our favorites: The Challenger, The Sisters, The Lookout, The Crack, The Cave, The Porthole, and The Face :-) We took TONS of pictures on the rocks. Here are a few of my favorites: