Day 6: Into the woods, out of the woods...

Blog updates have been lagging. Too much fun, too little time, and too cheap to pay hotel Internet fees. I'm taking advantage of Starbucks free wi-fi (thank you, Seattle).

So finishing off our Boise leg:

If you look very,very carefully at the photo below you can see a squirrel. If you can't, this is what travelling with Emma is like. She sees everthing, I see nothing. When she's on her own hordes of animals stream out of their holes and put on parades and juggling shows. When I walk into the room they poof out of existence and and laugh at me from their evil nether-world.

Apparently just before this photo was taken three squirrels running around doing all manner of stunts.
This is a shot of one of the squirrels after I caught it, broke its neck, and hung it off a nearby tree.

Just kidding. Squirrels are cool, even if they hate and mock me.

The plan for the day was to drive up to Idaho City. In classic Rock/Smith style everything was running late. While everybody dithered Mark and I drove up to the supermarket. Here's proof we were in Boise. Mark keeps money in his car:

In Sydney you might as well post a "smash this window" sign on the car.

Eventually we swung by Judi's and piled into her truck - some tiny American thing that only sits 17 people - and hit the hills.

Boise itself, despite the name (boise: French for "woods"), is largely devoid of trees. They should have called it "Dirt Scrub". Boise is high desert, and while it has its own stark beauty, it's not like the coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest.

For good measure it's been very dry, even by Idaho standards. Note how much water isn't in this river:

As we drove into the mountains we finally saw trees, water and Idaho City, population almost-empty:

I wonder if they really update it everytime a baby pops out or some old geezer drops off the perch.

During the 1860s Idaho City was the centre of Idaho's gold mining, and the third largest city in the northwest. Mining has virtually almost disappeared, although the saloon keeper at Diamond Lil's (I'm not making this up) told us that due to the soaring cost of gold two mines are about to re-open.

The saloon itself was built in the 1860s, and I think the bartender was part of the original fittings. He gave us a free history lesson and a lecture in mining economics. All part of the service.

Lunch was buckets of more fried stuff than I'd normally eat in a year, plus beer. The names of the local beers are gold: Bitch Creek and Laughing Dog.

The town also has bears:

Snow:



And a unique business culture:




Two highlights after we got home:

1) The San Francisco Giants kicked the snot out of the Texas Rangers in game one of the World Series, and

2) We engaged in mortal combat with the local wildlife. Emma was stung by a bee. Here's Robin administering first-aid:

And here's the freshly-executed bee, post-footstomping:

Bees: 1, human beings: 2.