Sunday Drives in Idaho, July 11, 2010

Normally, on Sundays, our day without our BeeCharmer, we take a drive to the mountains, our day adventures to places we haven't been before.  A few Sundays ago, we found ourselves at Blacks Creek Canyon...  what an AMAZING site.  My photo does not begin to do this scene justice.  It was absolutely breath-taking!

This canyon is deep, very deep!  You can barely see the dirt road we had ahead of us still, in the upper right third of this shot.  At the bottom of the canyon, was a beautiful, turquoise-bluegreen, bubbling river, Blacks Creek.  Look at those Ponderosa Pines... those are huge trees, dwarfed by the size of this canyon. 

Our drive that day was a long one, starting at east Boise and heading to Lucky Peak.  We continued on to Arrowrock Dam, taking the National Forest road along the reservoirs edge to the far end, where the Boise River becomes the reservoir.  It was there, at the head of the reservoir, that we crossed the river and headed up over the mountain on Slide Gulch Road.  We followed this all the way to Long Gulch Road.  Idaho mountains are amazing.  They are so much taller than the coastal mountains I grew up around in the Monterey Bay area of California.

After coming up over the mountain from the Boise River, we finally came to junction in where we could go three miles to the left and see the town of Prairie, Idaho.  Or, we could turn right on Blacks Creek Canyon Road.  We decided to check out Prairie, Idaho, first. 

Prairie, Idaho, is a very small town of just three streets.  It seems very peaceful there.  I often wonder, how people manage to live in such beautiful, out of the way places like Prairie, Idaho.

Back to our junction, we decided to take the Blacks Creek Road, a 42 mile ride back to Boise.  This is where we came across that amazing sight, the canyon pictured above.

Our travels took us up to another gorgeous view of Idaho country... where Blacks Creek drops into the Boise River and Arrowrock Reservoir.  We had no idea that what a pretty ride we would end up on that morning when we left the house.

This is the shot looking back at Blacks Creek as it merges with the Arrowrock Reservoir.  We dropped down from here into the desert and ended up at Interstate 84, near the Rest Stop, just east of Boise.  What a beautiful drive this day was!