Our last day of adventure in Idaho started out as another chilly and wet morning. Wanting to give a new place a try, Karen and I started out on the river bank behind the University of Idaho, Coeur d’Alene. It was also windy. There were a lot of little chicks there and these two appear to be siblings, with one giving the other what-for.

After not much going on there we headed back to the hotel to warm up a bit before heading over to pick up Janice. Out the window I happened to notice a magpie. I’ve been hunting for one of these the entire trip. They are like the common grackle here in Texas, usually everywhere, until you want to get a photo of one. This was the best I could do, through the dirty glass of my hotel window, but I can say I got one.

We headed north once more, looking for anything interesting. We headed up towards Newport and then over to Priest River. By then it was time for lunch. We stopped at a place called the Village Kitchen. Now, I had been craving an old-fashioned open-faced roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy for some time and the first thing I noticed on the menu was just that. I was all in. The guy running the place looked more like a surfer from California than an Idaho mountain dude, but he was nice, and his jokes were great. Lunch came, and the food was excellent!

As we were leaving I asked the guy if he knew of any cool waterfalls in the area. He gave me directions to some up around Priest Lake so we headed off in that direction. I found it on the map and plugged it into my GPS. We drove for a while, beautiful country, but when we got there we found the road blocked off with no idea how far it was to the actual waterfalls. I listened but did not hear the sound of rushing water anywhere.

We left, with me debating in my mind if we left without giving the place a fair shot but when we stopped for gas, I did some more quick googling and found that were were other falls not too far from where we were. We continued on and without seeing any signs, ended up on an old dirt forestry service road. After a few miles of my traveling companions questioning my sanity and directional ability, we arrived at a sign indicating the Roosevelt Grove of Ancient Cedars. The average age of the trees here is 800 years with some being 2000-3000 years old! Imaging being among living trees that were around while Jesus walked the earth!

Also at this place is Granite Falls. Another beautiful set of waterfalls for us to explore and photograph. Karen captured this of me while I was setting up for my first set of photos of the falls.

As you can see from this photograph, the water from these falls are blasting down the mountain. No way I’m getting in those waters, but the rocks are slippery. I’m glad my shoes had good grips on the soles.

Once again, while I was looking at the big picture, Karen was able to filter out the noise and notice the small beauty in the place. I really need to take a lesson from her on how to slow down and notice things.

After my initial shots I moved back to get more of the river that flows from the falls. I was able to carefully move out a little into the rocks in the river, but again was being very careful not to slip and get washed away.

And of course, we were finally in a spot were we could actually stand in some snow. After traveling all the way from Texas to see snow, we weren’t going to pass up the opportunity to stand in it and take a photo!

As we were leaving I noticed a sign pointing to another set of falls, but our time for this trip was up. As we arrived back at the blacktop, Karen had me stop so she could take a photo of the road lined with these huge trees. This is our path back home and our good-bye, at least for now, to Idaho.

It was a beautiful trip. Got to spend some quality time with our friend Janice, and got to see and photograph some beautiful scenery. I hope you enjoyed tagging along with us, even if this these posts come 3 months later. Maybe they provided some relief from the heat we are enduring right now here in Texas.

Until the next adventure,

Michael
Sharing God’s Creation, One Click at a Time

All words and photos copyright 2019 MHampton Photography
Equipment used: Canon 5DS-R, Canon 1DX II, Canon T6S, and various Canon lenses and Insta360 One X