Idahoâs highway 21 is a busy road because it is a winter gateway to everything from snowshoeing to snowmobiling.
I drive it a lot in the winter to hit the nordic ski trails about 18 miles northeast of Idaho City. It seems like Iâm so zoned in on getting from Boise to Gold Fork Park Nâ Ski area that I donât really see whatâs along the highway. I must have driven that road hundreds and hundreds of times since I first started cross-country skiing the area in the mid-â70s, even before formal nordic ski trails were developed in the area. I used to bushwhack mountain draws and old logging roads back in the days of Jackrabbit ski wax (remember the creosol-type smell of that wax?).
Wake up in a wonderland in the Southwest
Now that Under Canvas has glamping tents in the stunning parks of the Southwest , like this site near Arches National Park, there s no need for DIY if you’d really rather not. Courtesy of Under Canvas
The only way to spend the night in the magically colored and contoured national parks of the Southwestern U.S. used to be basic DIY camping. No longer. When the pioneering glamping company
Under Canvas opens its newest camp in April on the edge of Canyon Rim Plateau in Lake Powell–Grand Staircase, on 220 acres of red, orange, and yellow land you’ll be able to book a circuit that also includes camps in the Grand Canyon, Moab, and Zion parks. The stylish tents sleep up to seven, have hot water and daily housekeeping, and include the services of a personal “adventure concierge,” who will arrange every imaginable activity, including rugged Jeep tours, mountain biking, whitewater rafting, and more.
Si, Cisco.
Forty years ago, Long Valley, Idaho, was home to a world-class stick dog named Cisco. By âstick dogâ I mean a critter with an obsession for fetching chunks of wood that overrides all other considerations, like digging holes in petunia patches, rolling in cow manure or, in Ciscoâs case, even the urge to mate.
My daughter and I were living in a bunkhouse while I was cow-personing for a couple of pieces of summer pasture. Like most cowfolks, we had to have a few dogs to decorate the bed of our truck when we went to town. Our foundation stock was an unspayed Australian shepherd named Eagle, with one blue eye and a Gandhian attitude toward aggression. She was bred to be a sheep dog, more of a feeler than a heeler, and was wary of cattle, but she looked good in a pickup truck. She had mated a couple of times while we were working a Belgian horse ranch in Oregon, and because we were addicted to the smell of puppy breath, we kept one offspring from each litter, bo