When photographer friends explore, camp + frolick in Idaho

Well well, here we go again… This crazy-awesome friend of mine, Michele, who I’ve so fortunately known for like, oh I don’t even know….nearly a decade!? We’ve had several amazing times together in Colorado, and last summer she visited me in Kansas City (want to revisit that goodness? I don’t blame you one bit, click here), and nowwwww we can say that I’ve been out to Idaho to hang out with her!

I arrived on a Monday afternoon and we had the rest of that day through the following Friday together. Lots of good food, endless laughs, talks til our voices faded, a fun camping experience, frolicking in the Payette River, and so so much more.

OBVIOUSLY just like when she was in KC, “photo safari’s” as we like to call ‘em, occurred, and just like last time (and all future times, no doubt) we end up with way more outtakes and awkward faces/poses than we do anything else. But I mean really, isn’t that the best part!?

First thing Tuesday morning…well, not quite first thing, luckily for me, Michele too likes to sleep in just a tad! But after we were up and about, we drove to a nearby hike she had in mind. JUMP CREEK! Which involved a short hike to a super cool waterfall, and oh, a whole lot of sliding down a hill on my hands and feet. I’d say THANKS A LOT MICHELE, but I wasn’t the only one sliding down on hands and feet…..and it was totally an accident when what looked like a connection to another trail was in fact, not a connection at all. And, if you climb up a slick tiny-rock covered hill with nowhere to go, you gotta get back down that sucker.

Fun fact. I’m short. I have short legs. And this here is the look (and fist, look closely) of a victorious rock-hop that did not result in my falling into the water.

Waterfall was definitely worth it!

Pictured left: one of many awkward moves I do in front of a camera.
Pictured right: awesome waterfall.

Hiking over to another section of the trail — first picture below is not what it might look like. It is not me just suddenly squatting for a photo, no, not at all….that would be the aftermath of my right foot flying out from underneath me and me going downnnntownnnn.

Oh hey! Michele and Mark’s new house!

After a quick clean-up back at the house, we headed to downtown Boise! Michele had a sweet lunch spot picked out for us — hello fish and chips from Bittercreek Alehouse! Then we skipped over to a local store with cool goodies, and thennn to the below…..known as, Freak Alley. Love it!

The remainder of Tuesday involved Michele showing me cool stuff around the area, like the hangar where their plane resides, a super awesome coffee shop in Hyde Park…..named Hyde Perk. Ask me how obsessed I am with word play like that!? And dinner at a swanky place called GRIT in downtown Caldwell, which had, without a doubt, the best chips + salsa I’ve ever consumed in all my days.

WEDNESDAY

We once again took our time getting out of bed, gloriousness! Michele had a call with a potential bride, (she booked, yay!) and after breakfast we drove over to Mark’s work to switch out the car with the truck/camper. Any guesses what that means we were about to do!?

Well for starters, we packed up the truck/camper. Then we took off for a grocery store to buy a few necessities, and almosttttt bought a car-sized unicorn float. Almost. Then we stopped for gas so we’d be nice and fueled up and Michele almostttt intentionally hopped a curb. Almost. Mark, if you’re reading this, shhh shh, is okay. Then we swung by Old Navy because I needed a pair of cheap flip flops (spoiler alert: those flip flops, well, the right one anyways, was inevitably lost in action within the first 2 hours of ownership).

Oh and then Michele was all “Let’s get Pupusa’s from A&J’s for dinner tonight cause those will be easy to warm up on site!” And I was all “The eff’s a Pupusa!???”

Answer: a thick corn pancake filed with savory fillings like beans and cheese or meats. They are a traditional food from El Salvador.

So we picked up those crazy things called Pupusa’s and then my friends, we were onward for the 1.5 hour drive into the mountains of Idaho. Boise National Park was our destination, and finding the ideal camping spot on the Middle Fork of the Payette River was our goal. How about another spoiler alert?? We most definitely found THE most amazing spot ever!

Having a campsite that was super secluded and off to ourselves was the goal, and this one felt ideal — plus that big cluster of rocks you see on the right above and again below? T-total selling point!!! We needed to be able to play in that water, and oh friends, play we did.

I wish I could tell you it took Michele a whole lot longer to end up with a wet butt….I’m sure she wishes I could tell you that too, but alas, that would be a bold lie.

Setting up your camera on a tripod in a fairly-quick-moving river all for the sake of taking painfully awkward pics and endless outtakes together? ALWAYS. A. GOOD. IDEA.

MICHELE:

making awkward situations even more awkward since the 80’s.

This next series……I gotta hand it to Michele. Girl knows how to strike an ongoing pose.

There we go, there’s a “good” one hahahaa

“WHAT WAS THAT!?”

“Let’s stand up, I bet that’ll help.”

Find yourself a friend who laughs so, so hard, that she too has to hold onto her knees

Or better yet, a friend who laughs in all the same ways as you — knees, chin up, cover ya nose.

ME: ***friendship!!***
MICHELE: ***denied***

I can’t be held responsible for what follows when you go back to your camera, leaving my awkward self in front of it, and then tell me to “do something”

Michele: “Flip your hair!”
Me: ***nailed it***

Michele: “Flip your hair like, with your whole body”
Me: ***nailed it***

Yup. Still making awkward situations all the more awkward, classic Michele. (but don’t you love her for it!?)

Here’s a few normal ones!

Ohhhh

Wuuuppp

Ooopppp

Dang.

These cool pics were totally worth it though!!

For her walk back….I’d like to call this next series the innocence of a big long stick in the water, drifting by, touching ya leg, you know, scaring you to death.

A normal photo of me quickly followed by what happens when you leave the camera on me for a second too long (aka: the very next second).

Michele: “Push your chest out”
Me:

Unfortunately for me…..Michele wasn’t the only one who fell in the river. And even more unfortunately for me….while Michele luckily fell forward, I on the other hand fell backwards. And TMI folks, but I didn’t exactly bring a change of underwear for this one-night of camping.

Middle right photo — pretty sure there’s a fun four-letter word escaping my mouth.

Bottom right photo — that’s actually from earlier, when my flip flop slipped off the first time. But THIS TIME y’all, both flip flops slipped off, and downstream they went. Michele caught my lefty, but not my righty, and my righty was never seen again.

That’s me, shamelessly hanging up my wet pants…and even more shamelessly you’ll find my soaked underwear hanging there in the foreground. YOLO!

Michele sat her camera up on the tripod and had it shoot like every 5 seconds for a half hour+, we ended up with way too many photos as the sun went down, as it got pitch black outside, and as we ate dinner. Butttt there was definitely some gems in there too! I used her gorilla-pod to set up my phone and took video of the entire time, too!

Open-mouth laughing or howling at the moon!? Take your pick.

The moment we realized the stars were looking pretty incredible from where we were!

What hooking a headlamp light to your tripod will get ya haha

Next up — not sleeping. But first, we had a minor (see: major) bug problem inside the camper. Thank heavens for a vacuum! Also, one of my favorite pics from the entire trip comes next, us still not able to be serious even we when are exhausted and ready for bed!

After we both successfully barely slept, it was a rise and SUNSHINE morning :) We kicked it off with some fun slow shutter speed pics, and us getting right back into that river! This time, I had to wear my tennis shoes and just deal with soaking ‘em. Newsflash - walking on unstable wet rocks is easier in sneakers vs flip-flops…..facepalm.

I wish I could tell you — I wish I could remember — what the heck I was laughing so hard about here

GOAL 1 — spin around on a rock in the river for a slow shutter speed photo series.
GOAL 2 — don’t effin’ fall in.
4TH PHOTO — the look on my face when I realize I successfully met both goals lol

One of Michele’s best ideas while we were in the river comes up next — first photo is the look of YOU READY FOR THIS!? Eff yeah.

Me: “Hey, this water smells good”

Michele: “Does it???”

Back to awkward just.like.that.

One awkward. One semi-normal. One - “We good? Cause I’m done.”

Once again, I’m awkward, then you get a few decent shots before I get awkward again. Michele does a great job at capturing my genuine laughing face, which I’m so thankful for cause sometimes my laughing face can look a littttle insane.

On my walk back? I too had an encounter with an unexpected stick which also scared the bajesus outta me.

Full conversation with rocks —

So funny story… Michele at one point thought she spotted my righty flip-flop downstream, hung up in a downed tree. We both thought, there’s no way, it’s been over 12 hours. But, off she went, carefully making her way down the river. She arrives and yells back “You aren’t going to believe this” — I thought for sure, she had found my flip flop. Then she asked “Did you lose the left or the right!??”

Come to find out….she had not found my long lost right flip flop, but instead, ironically, found someone else’s lost flip flop…….in my size. If only it had been a righty, this would have been fate I’m pretty sure. But alas, I wound up with two mismatched lefty flip flops.

Guess what else happened that morning!? Mark, and their niece Mackenzie managed to track down our location and they came and flew over us in their plane!!

A few more memory-making photos of our cool spot and the truck/camper before we packed it all up and headed back!

They say leave only footprints, take only memories………. well, I unintentionally left a right flip flop and intentionally took one commemorative cool rock!

A pitstop on our drive back for a super scenic view and a few wind-blown photos was just what we needed!

THURSDAY

After making it back to their house and us unloading the truck, we got all cleaned up and then took off for another fun little coffeeshop in downtown Caldwell. The Flying M provided us with something delish to drink and introduced me to the most delicious house-made vegan nut bar E V E R. (Insider info, I took 3 home with me!).

That evening we 4 - Michele, Mark, niece Mackenzie, and myself all made little personal pizzas for dinner and I introduced these peeps to the JOY and deliciousness of adding cilantro to your pizza!

The rest of that evening was spent sitting on their back deck chatting it up!

FRIDAY

Friday was both mine and Michele’s day to leave Idaho.. Ya see, as fate would have it, she was shooting a wedding the next day back in Colorado, and my connecting flight back to KC just so happened to be in Denver. SO! She booked the same flight as me so that we could fly from Boise to Denver together!!

I got up way too early for something totally worth it — before Mark headed off for another work-related flight in the back country, that homeboy took me over to the hangar for a quick fun flight because quite frankly, any chance I have to go up in their Kitfox, I’m gonna jump on it!

We flew past their house!!

Anddddddd with that friends, is the end of the photos from the trip!

Once I drove myself back to their house from my fun flight with Mark, Michele and I both were in prep and pack mode before jetting off to the airport. We did make a pitstop at an acai bowl place which was mind-blowingly delicious, but my camera was packed up the whole time so no more photos. I did however, keep recording some video on my phone!

As per my sometimes usual, I did a video of the whole trip, so if you want to see this trip video style, accompanied by mine and Michele’s favorite band — Lord Huron, you’re in luck. Click below!!

And as always, if you survived my entire vacation/trip blog post, you deserve an award, cause I don’t hold back haha. Thanks for reading and looking!!