Discovering new places

While living in Boise, we decided to drive up to Payette Lake, about a two-hour drive.

At Cascade, we drove around and ended up on a dirt road that headed east.

We kept going and ended up in what is called the Stanley Basin. Stanley is a town of maybe 500-600 people. The town has a two-room schoolhouse with kids from all grades. But the little village houses a gigantic view of the Sawtooth Mountain Range.

Its ragged rocky mountains reminded me of the Teton Range in Wyoming.

It was our first discovery of the Sawtooths. Stanley is about 65 miles north of Sun Valley, an area that I got to know well since the newspaper sent me there for a week two years in a row for the national coaches’ clinic. I got to listen to a lot of talks by what then were well known personalities.

We loved Stanley. It had a hotel, restaurant and little else. On another trip we took a raft trip on the river there. The Sawtooth Range at the time was considered as a national park, but range issues and strong cattlemen influence led the government to change the range and valley into a national recreation area instead.

Part of the argument at the time was that Idaho had too much land set aside already.

The range had a ridge of very rugged peaks. There are a number of trail heads and a lake with natïve trout.

Well, today the basin and mountain range have been fully discovered and it’s a spot visited by hundreds of people.

We have returned to Stanley and the Sawtooth Range probably a dozen times or more.

That’s the best way to discover new places.