Sun Valley, Idaho

After driving about six hours, I arrived in Sun Valley, Idaho.  It was a place I had never visited before and I was excited to check it out.

Sun Valley, Idaho is not a town, in itself.  It is a popular Ski Valley along the Wood River comprised of several small towns.  The main towns are Bellevue, Hailey, and Ketchum.

Ketchum seemed to be the most popular.  It was a bustling tourist community with traffic inching along through the quaint small town.

I was tired and not ready to deal with traffic, so found a National Forest road and drove to a place that looked like it would be nice to camp.  Wrong!  The mosquitoes had no mercy.  They were biting any area of exposed skin several times in one chomp.  I knew I had to get out of this place.

I went back into town and headed on down the highway until I came to a nice riverfront picnic area.  I stopped for a while and enjoyed the peaceful sounds of nature.  There were few others at the park.  It was a good place to make lunch and chill.

Knowing that I could park my van and camp any place in the National Forest, I wasn’t concerned about finding a place to sleep for the night.

When evening came, I decided to take a road going the opposite direction as last time and ended up in a beautiful green valley with pullouts along side the road. There were some interesting camper rigs pulled off to the side.  I found my own little pull-out and nestled in for the evening.  There was a very mild rain beginning to come down and the air so fresh and clean.

I grabbed my new instrument, a Strum Stick, which is a three string instrument similar to a guitar, but much smaller.  I found myself playing a singing until I had a new tune going through my head.  That tune would be the theme song for the next couple days.

The next day I went back to the park to make my tea and chill.  It was actually still quite cool out so I do mean “chill.”  I crawled into my blankets with my hot tea and wrote in my journal, with the sounds of the river serenading me.

After a breakfast of Granola and banana, I drove to Hailey where I saw a Natural Grocers and grabbed a few items.  I passed by the Starbucks (without stopping) and headed back to Ketchum to catch the Art Festival.  After that I went to a hiking trail I saw earlier.  I had my green drink of coconut water, Spirulina and Barley Grass, to both hydrate and give me extra energy for the hike.

It was a beautiful hike along the Wood River.  I hiked about three miles in until I came to another parking lot and decided to turn around.  There were lots of mountain bikers on this trail, and very few hikers.  I could have taken side trails and continued on, but by the time I returned it was a six mile hike and the temperatures were nearing ninety degrees.

After this beautiful hike and amazing day in the beautiful Sun Valley, it felt time to move on.  I had no agenda.  No destination.  It was Saturday and I didn’t have to get in position for work until Sunday.  I could stop anywhere I wanted.  I loved this feeling.