Idaho In Color

I bought this camera from Adorama and had it in just a few days. Off I went with my wife to "shoot" some birds, first eagles and then ducks and cormorants. I was pleased with the results and Adorama sent me a coupon saying I could have a free album to put them in which I ordered and it will be here in a few days.

The pics I took were very clear with good color and I got that increase in magnification. So I'm pleased. If I were rich (or at least not so cheap) I would by that $10,000 lens with the 1.5 multiplier and the fancy camera to accommodate it. But this will do for now.

An Eagle photo is in the next Big Pic module.

Every winter bald eagles come down are way to eat fish scraps from our many trout hatcheries. After all, we are the Trout Capital of the World, shipping trout around the world. Yes, that critter at your butcher shop is probably from here in Buhl, ID.

The other day I was showing a couple our eagles and he counted 26 in one tree. I took his word for it.

This is an amazing camera. I was up in Yellowstone taking pics of wolves with my old film camera with a 300mm lens. I needed something stronger. Now with the new FinePix HS10 / HS11 I will get those shots I've missed in the past. My new camera will be here in a couple of days and I am really getting excited. Amazon has a good price so I'm getting mine there. John

I first went to the Tetons as a Boy Scouts right after WWII. We had 13 in our car and 11 in the second car. Our tires were of bad quality and we had a number of flats not only on the cars but on the trailers.

We got into camp at String Lake about 10:30 P.M. The camp was occupied by a herd of deer which soon departed our arrival. We hiked and swam and rode horses. Our big thrill was hiking to Lake Solitude. We left about 6:00 A.M. and got back long after dark. We had a horrible stew that tasted great until we got to the fourth bowl.

Did we get into trouble? Yes! Here is a poem I wrote on one event:

Bill Shultz and the Teton Ride

Monday, May 3, 1999

I was sitting in my office
In the York Ward
When in came a tall, red-haired lad,
An emissary of our Lord.

I said, "You're Bill Schultz' son,
That I know for sure.
How is your dad,
I haven't seen him for years?

"How did you know?"
That's what he said.
I said, "You look just like him.
A better friend no man ever had.

I picked up the phone
And asked, What's your home number?
I dialed and there was Bill.
I said I've got a young man here!

Talk to him for a spell.
They talked and then
I talked to Bill,
Renewing things long past.

I told the lad of his great dad,
And about our scouting days.

We were in the Teton Mountains--
From the troop,
Larry Haywood and I
Snuck away to rent horses
And ride the trails;
We did it every day.

Then on Friday,
A beautiful summer's day,
The troop decided to ride.

We rented horses
For one scout or two,
The wranglers
Warning,
"These critters are not broke
For double ridin',
And don't forget that these
Are trail horses,
Not made to race on track."

So off we went,
And some of the scouts
Got thrown for double ridin'.
I remember Dickey Duncan
Limping down the trail.
He's long gone now,
Died in a fire
At the Capital Theater.

The rest of us
Took the Jenny Lake road;
Bill Schultz decided to gallop.
So down the middle
Of the blacktop he rode,
Our leader out in front.

I yelled, "Don't gallop
On the road,
Get back on the trail!"

That's when a survey team
Flashed a steel tape
In front of Bill's fast steed.
The critter turned toward the east,
Bill kept going south.

He smashed upon the blacktop,
The other horses followed his.
The scouts had no control,
The horses were going home.

Well, Wally fell after
The first fence was leaped,
Along with several others,
Almost in a heap.

Larry and I tried to stop the horses,
But they just kept running.
We knew we were in trouble now,
The wranglers saw us coming.

The second fence
Dropped the rest of the troop,
All but me and Larry.
We rained up before the last fence
Waiting for the wrangler's fury.

"You two know better
Than to run these horses!
You've been here every day.
Get down from there,
And don't come back.
We're sending you away!"

We slithered down
And caught their boots,
Making our poor rumps pain.
"We don't ever want to see you two!
No, not ever again!"

Well, we walked back
Across the fields,
To help our friends along.
We saw old Bill,
His red hair flashing,
He was limping like the rest.

His clothes were torn,
His face was bleeding
All because of not heeding
My yell to stop riding
Down the middle of that road
Like Jerry Colona charging
In The Road to Rio.

I often think of that trip,
We worked so hard to go.
We rode up,
Twelve or thirteen to a car,
The old tires often blowing.

We swam in freezing lakes,
We hiked for twenty miles.
Those were the days
Of splendor in Wyoming,
Being with my pals-
Now some gone to heaven.
I looked at Bill's son,
He looked back at me,
A smiling, happy lad.
He said, "Dad never told me
About that ride.
I really wish he had!"

Anyway, we try to get up there every year.

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We like to go to Yellowstone often. It is a bit further than from my home town of SLC, but we can still get up there in a day.

I like to photograph the wild life but we also have to watch Old Faithful blow her stack. She is not as reliable as she was
before the last main earthquake in 1959 but she goes off in a reasonable time so that you know she will blow.

Photographing wildlife is easy in the park so take your camera preferably one with some magnification.

I like to visit the parts of the park that have no roads. Well, I use to when I could hike all day.

Everyone should see Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons--as often as they can!

Elk are easy to photograph in the Yellowstone. They are a bit more secretive because of the introduction of wolves that love to kill their calves. There is one myth about wolves and that is that they only kill to eat. Well, as is well documented, they kill sheep and cattle to train their pups leaving the meat to other predators.

Mammals must train their young to survive and they need to let them practice killing until they learn how to survive. I have not heard of this random killing among the elk. Elk, with their humongous horns are not good to practice on.

A good place to photograph wolves is near elk.

Yellowstone is a great place to observe the American Buffalo or American Bison. They can show up around the next curve, in the meadows, along the rivers. And wolves may be near by. I photographed a pack eating bison that had evidently died in the Yellowstone River. There were a hundred cameras clicking, some with telephoto lenses that were a mile long. We hill people tend to exaggerate so maybe they were not that long. My mouth waters when I see such a lens. Some of them probably cost $4000.00 or so.

Don't get near the bison. They can and do kill eager photographers. Get that telephoto lens going.

Dogs! I took this photo in front of a restaurant in West Yellowstone. Handsome critters. I took some wolf pics too but not with my digital camera. Maybe I'll dig them out later.

I clicked this bird on the Snake River near Haggerman, ID. I have always wanted to raise pheasants but never got around to it. but it is not too late for you. Just click on the pic.

Idaho once had millions of pheasants. In out area, when they got rid of irrigation itches we lost many of the birds. The State preserves them here and there but much of the great hunting is over.

Yes, we still irrigate. We just don't need the ditches so much. Well, we need the big canals that bring the water to us but pipes and pumps do the rest.

There are lots of buffalo and antelope on Antelope Island. It is a great place to visit. I just didn't know it.

When I was a kid, you needed a boat to get there. Now you can drive there.

There are lots of birds to see but the bison and antelope are what interested me the most. There were millions of grebes along the rode and I took a lot of photos but the buffalo and pronghorns are more photogenic! Maybe!

Bruneau Dunes State Park is not too far from Glenns Ferry and Three Island Crossing State Park. You can camp and fish and even study astronomy as they have an observatory. The kids love to climb the dunes. I loved to sit under a tree in the shade and go click, click, click.

Click on the pic to learn about the park.

We have Eagles near my home in Buhl, Idaho. They are across the Snake River to the North in rural Wendell, Idaho. Drive north of Buhl, cross the river, take the second left to the end of the road before the dead-end sigh, turn right (you are on 1500 E), drive until you come to the little store and cafe at West Point, park in the store parking lot and look at the Eagles.

The eagles are not there too much during the day. They head for Box Canyon where trucks from the trout processing plants drop waste which the eagles gobble up. Best time for photography is in the morning but I have found good lighting at times in the evening.

Last time I was there (oh, nest to last) I was showing Ben Johnson and his wife the eagles. They had been birding at the state fish hatchery near Hagerman, Idaho. Ben counted 26 eagles in the tree we were looking at.

Have fun.

We drove up to Mount Borah in July, 2010 (I think!) It is the highest mountain in the State. While Colorado has 54 peaks over 14,000 feet and Utah has some over 13000 feet, Idaho is a piker as far as altitude goes. But Borah Peak is 12,662 which would be very high in Texas or Oklahoma but not Alaska.

"In 1983, an earthquake occured near the base of Borah Peak. The peak registered 7.3 on the richter scale. The earthquake raised Borah Peak 7 feet. The scarp is still visible along the western side of the peak and is crossed on the drive into the trailhead." (That is what it says on the site.)

The peak went up. The valley dropped. Springs sprung up and flooded folks here and there. Humm!

In the foreground of the pic you can see the scarp area where earthquake trauma occurred. Exciting stuff, right?

Anyway, my neighbors were up there hunting elk. The got their pants scared off and they were stuck in the boonies for several days until someone fixed the rode which seemed to have a big gap in it. Humm!

Well, click on the pic.

The other day a boyscout tumbled down the peak. Nobody missed him that much. He fell several hundred feet which knocked him out. He woke up about seven hours later in much pain. Eventually they found him, but his family is mad as hell!

"Oh, did we lose another scout?" Hmmm!

About everybody in Idaho has climbed the peak. Don't go with the Scouts.

I've been to Porterville several times but I drove right through it again. My wife said to go up to the East Canyon Reservoir before turning around. She wanted to take my picture sitting on a roadside rail, tried her hardest, but just couldn't handle the camera. Finally, when the lens seemed to be pointing near me, I said, "Click it!" The picture came out perfect!

The Mormon pioneers use to climb up there this way on there way into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake which Jim Bridger claimed to discover. Jim said that he would give a $1000.00 for the first bushel of corn raised in that valley. I don't know who collected the money.

Click on the pic for East Canyon State Park.

We drove back to the tiny town of Porterville and stopped a young man in a red pickup truck. I said, "Are you a Porter? He said, "No, I'm a Carter but I'm related to the Porters." Rather than just tell us how to get to the cemetery, he turned his truck around and led us up there. My long-lost cousin, Richard Carter, is a good guy!

The cemetery is a weed-filled place with signs of work. Many of the tombstones had been replaced and according to the register book, the youth from Morgan, Utah had cleaned the place up not to long ago--but weed are weeds.

I had no problem find the Porter Family plot. With the Carter Family plot it took half the cemetery. I found my great great great grandparents easily. I also found my great great grandfather and many others that I knew off. But my great grandfather was not there but I remembered that he had died in Bountiful, Utah where my father was born in room above a saloon in 1900. That is a historical site, the old building still standing.

My great grandfather was born on the Sweetwater River in Wyoming in 1847. A month after he was born, the Rich Party, led by my great grand uncle, entered the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. The winter of 1859, his grandfather, rode up over East Mountain and found this spot suitable for a saw mill. The next year he got heavy equipment up there somehow and build the mill. Members of the family have been there ever since. He called the place "Hardscrabble" and the cemetery is off Hardscrabble Road.

My grandfather had his leg crushed at the granite quarry for the Salt Lake Temple above Salt Lake City. He and his brother some how got up to Porterville, they walked, where my future grandmother cared for his leg. Bone fragments were still poking through his skin after two years but he felt well enough to leave. But he went back eight years later and married my grandmother, Lydia Rosella Porter, daughter of John President Porter, Jr., and granddaughter of Sanford Porter, out Patriarch.

The photo is from the cemetery and looks over Porterville. Click on it to see a Utah History URL.

Richard Carter told me the one landmark in Porterville was the old ward house that burned down about 30 years ago. The church built a new building but left the old one standing. I thought it was an interesting picture so I included it here.

Click on the pic for more Porterville Utah history.

I clicked this pic of my Great Grandfather's tombstone so my grand kids can see it.

Click on the pic for more history of John President Porter and John President Porter, Jr.

We took a drive to the Rock Creek Station and Sticker Homesite operated by the Idaho State Historical Society. The main sites are the new interpretive center, the Sticker home and the old log cabin store. The log house is the oldest building in Twin Falls County.

We were able to tour the home but it was too early in the day for the ghost to be out. The caretaker said they would be out in four or five hours. I guess that is when the building cools off from the blistering sun and starts creaking. I'm not much for ghost but plenty have heard them but none have been recognized as the Stickers. The home is something to see as it is much the same as when the Stricker family lived there.

In 1865, John Bascom and John Corder build the log store and lived in it until the home still standing was completed. In 1876, Herman Stricker and Botzet, Idaho gold prospectors, bought he store and property. Stricker ran the store until 1897.

A sure thing to do while there is to visit the new interpretive center. It is very well done and informative. Eventually the railroads eliminated the need for the old stage stop. Fortunately, this site is well preserved and a must visit to those interested in the Oregon Trail.

Click on the pic to read the history!

We decided to go to Yellowstone again and the Tetons on 9-21-2010 and we took the Scenic Mesa Falls Drive on HIghway 47 north of St. Anthony, ID. It's a great drive and not much of a detour on your way to Yellowstone. Lower Mesa Falls is easy to view but there is a hike too difficult for my wife to Upper Mesa Falls. So I took this pic for my wife even though she threw my breakfast away this morning before I could eat it.

We missed a turn on our way North the other day and ended up at the Minidoka Internment National Monument near Hope Idaho. In 1943-45, the brilliant minds in Washington D.C. decided that Japanese Americans, citizens of the United States, were a danger to national security so they took away their possessions and put them out in the boonies of Idaho.They could say NO, NO or YES, YES to Security Questions. The NO, NOS were sent to a more secure camp. The others were allowed to serve their country in the military or in war production in the East. Those who chose the military served in both the Pacific and the Europe and did their country proud. Now the camp is desolate place on a fish-less irrigation canal where the former residents proudly caught fish where there were no fish. A nice V Japanese garden was planted after the war but nobody took care of it. There is an exhibit on this camp at the Fossil Museum in Hagerman, ID where it does not belong. It belongs out there in the boonies.

I have a friend named Ted Fuji. During the War I was afraid that Hoover would send him of to a prison camp. We kids also though the old man collecting coal around the railroad tracks was actually counting the tanks and guns rolling by. He disappeared late in the war and the rumor was that he had a radio. That was all so much B.S.

Click on the pic to learn more.

I love to paint the Tetons. I usually take a photo or one hundred and then paint. Moran is a good looking mountain but I don't like that hill in the left of it. It is not very scenic. I wish God had moved it further to the left out of the picture. But He didn't so I didn't either.