We’ve been living in Idaho now for nearly 2 months. We’ve enjoyed the area so far, but haven’t really ventured out to see what this part of the country offers outside of the Boise area.
Some friends from work said McCall was a nice area to visit so this past Saturday we hopped in the car and started the 110 mile drive north. We got off to our usual late start and figured we’d get there around 2:00 pm or so.
The area around Boise is pretty flat with the foothills not too far away. This time of the year it’s pretty gray out with all the leaves gone from the trees. We miss the evergreens from Oregon. About 20 minutes into our drive we started to get some elevation and the pine trees started to show up more frequently. There was snow lining the road at this point and the scenery went from being bland to really pretty.
The highway follows the Payette River almost the entire way up to McCall so we stopped a few times for photos. Most of the river was running pretty quickly through some big rocks, but there were also some quiet spots where it spread out a bit over some flatter land. River rafting is pretty popular in the area so I’ll have to try and convince the girls to go when it’s warmer.
We finally made it into McCall early in the afternoon and found a place to have some lunch. Once we finished lunch we walked around town for a while and made our way out to the edge of Payette Lake. The lake had frozen over and was covered in snow, but we stayed along the edge while others in the area went out to go ice fishing or just walk on the lake.
We ended up leaving McCall around 5:30pm and made it back to Meridian to get some grocery shopping done before heading home. Now that we know it’s not too far to get into some nice scenery we’ll go out exploring more often.
