Who knew?

Who knew that the adorable Queen of Skunk Cabbage, would grow up to become the adorable Gluten Free Quilter?  In my younger days, my dad worked for the Forest Service.  This resulted in me spending a great deal of time on the Boise National Forest, exploring, fishing, wading, throwing rocks in the creek or river, picking/eating berries, drinking root beer, and taking naps.  Due to the COVID-19 situation, my husband and I have taken several trips up to my old stomping grounds and 'camped out'.  He bought a couple solar panels, inverter, and a large capacity battery, so we could catch some rays.  Those caught rays powered my sewing machine, iron, and a fan all day long.  There was still enough energy at the end of the day to run our TV so we could watch some murder mysteries after dinner.  Some camping trip!!!  

We went up on June 30 and came back after the 4th of July weekend.  Here is the skunk cabbage!  Oh, you can see a little bit of the creek, behind it (upper right).

Here is our camp site.  This was the first day, and we did not have the awning up yet.  You can see the two solar panels just to the right of the American flag.  We towed our Blazer, so we could go exploring on some days.  We are always looking for a new nice place to camp, but this is our favorite.  About 90 feet on the other side of the Blazer is the creek; an excellent place to cool off.

We had some extraordinarily high temperatures in Idaho during the last six weeks . . . it got pretty warm up here in the late afternoons, so a cold dip was a wonderful thing.

Here I am piecing a Halloween quilt.  I got all the blocks finished and sewed to each other, while using solar power out in the boondocks. I have a braided rug under my table, where I place my peddle and bag of pieces and parts.  There is usually a breeze, so my blocks are under my ruler and pop-up to keep them from blowing away.

These two shots seem a little on the dark side, but you can see my blocks, my bunting, and the evergreens beyond.  This is almost like saying "What's on the Design Wall In July?"

We drove up to Lower Lave Mountain Trail Head, to check out the creek there and see if there were any campers.  The road, in the photo above, is the one we came up to get to Lower Lava Mtn TH.  It is a one-track road with no turn-outs, but this would be a fabulous place to camp out if you do not use an RV to do your camping in.  There was no one camping up there.  The creek was much lower on July 2nd, than it had been last August when we were up there.  Then we checked out Long Gulch Creek, down where Long Gulch Guard Station used to be, and it was as low on July 2nd as it was last August.  There are little fishes in there, and I wonder what will become of them if the creek dries completely up!  I caught my first fish in Long Gulch Creek when I was six years old.  It is beautiful up here, but I think the Forest Service is letting it go.  These hot temperatures are not good for the creeks and their ecosystems.

This tree survived the huge fire that came through here in the early 1990's.  Not much left here to indicate there had been a nice guard station here.  This is where we camped over the 4th of July in 2020 (last year).