Kellogg, Idaho

This old air compressor was in the Bunker Hill Mine.







Silver Mountain Resort Gondola. They were doing a training.



Noah and I walked to the Shoshone County Mining & Smelting Museum. It was closed, but a really nice man, who had once worked in the mine, gave us a tour of the museum and showed us some old minerals, maps and ledgers. It was SO cool!

Silver Mountain Ski Area, Kellogg, Idaho

Summer Chinook Salmon Hatchery, McCall, Idaho

Noah and I went to visit the McCall Fish Hatchery and found their traveling Fish Marking Unit there. When we went inside their trailer, we found 16 people working to mark one million fish in one week.

Salmon have two top fins. People fishing in Idaho are not allowed to keep wild salmon that they catch, so the Idaho Fish & Game technicians snip the second top fin off the tiny salmon in the hatcheries before they are released into the rivers. That way, a person fishing knows that they can keep a salmon with one top fin and must release a salmon with two top fins.

The water and fish are diverted from a raceway through the marking unit.

This pan of water has the anesthesia that relaxes the fish so the technicians can easily pick them up and snip off their second fin. There is no blood supply to the area being snipped and it doesn't hurt the fish.

The collection basin was really cool. There is a wave machine that makes big ole currents to get the fish strong enough to swim in the river.

You can see how big the fish are in the collection basin, compared the the tiny fish in the raceways.

We knew she was doing something exciting! She was filling her truck with water for the fish!

Then this guy started crowding the fish into one side of the collection basin so the girl could suck them up into her truck. I asked him if he liked herding fish. He said it was pretty hard and gave me a nice courtesy laugh for my bad joke.

It was so crazy to see the fish flying through the air and landing in the truck!

Noah in front of the collection basin. There were so many fish in that water!

The sign on the back of their trailer.

Ponderosa State Park, McCall, Idaho

Noah and I explored the park on our bikes while Jason was as the trade show today. It was beautiful! I wish I had taken more pictures!

Payette Lake, McCall, Idaho

McCall, Idaho Golf Course

Hangin' out on the golf course.

Ponderosa State Park, McCall, Idaho

I thought I got more pictures, but we did get here after dark and most of the time was spent burning stuff in the campfire!

Tubing Hill, Garden Valley, ID

Here is the tubing hill, and you can barely see our snowmaker, but I was most interested in the very old, abandoned house behind it. It's over 100 years old (I later found out that it's one of the houses purchased from a Sears catalog a long time ago!). Noah and I explored around it a little and the doors were unlocked but we did not go inside. It gave me a really creepy feeling, so we just stayed outside! I was so creeped out that I even forgot to take close up pictures of it! Oooooooo! Someone had begun renovations on it, but just stopped a few years ago. Wonder why.....

The view from the tubing hill and a boy playing in the mud.

Muddy Noah

Garden Valley, Idaho

This was about all that existed in Garden Valley and it was right out our window! We watched the "pincher" and the forklifts load trucks for 3 days. I was actually really excited to see the sawmill because I knew Noah would love it--and he did!

Noah and I also drove around and explored the little town, but since the tubing hill was in an area that is still being developed, there wasn't anything going on there but construction. We had a good time during the drive out there and back and, as always, we had fun entertaining ourselves while Jason was working on the hill.