McCall ID

On the road again, we head north towards cooler temperatures. Our goal is Ponderosa State Park in McCall, about 110 miles north of Boise. Ponderosa is a small state park with the Payette Lake as its western border. As we drive north, we start to climb, and the scenery goes from rather dry and arid to mountainous and forested. We stop for lunch at a wide spot just off the road overlooking the Payette river.

After awhile, the mountains open up to valleys, and the farther north we head, the greener the grass gets. It's actually starting to look like Wyoming.

Eventually, we make it to our campsite in Ponderosa State Park. The campsite is spacious, smells like forest and has full hook-ups. What a find!

The park has a beautiful lakefront.

Our first bike ride on one of the park's numerous bike/hike trails ended with a flat tire and the day in town getting it repaired. Well, actually, it didn't take that long to repair, but I made Tom take me to the Christmas House. We did make up the missed bike ride the next day by going to the lake access at the far end of the park. Only minor hills, but too much for me! (Also going through the forest got me the first mosquito bites since Oregon!)

Sadly, we were only able to get 2 days at Ponderosa, but we like McCall so much that we find another place to stay, Northfork Lodge & Cabins. Don't let the name fool you, this is a lovely RV park on the west side of town near the airport. (I didn't really hear the airplanes, but there was an occasional noisy helicopter!)

Across the road from our site, the bluff overlooks the Payette River, and there's a hiking/bike path nearby that takes you to a bridge across the Payette.

While we are in McCall,  Tom manages to find pickleball (what a surprise)! He, of course, makes friends, and they want him to return. I, in the meantime, have decided that I love McCall/Donnelly and want to live here, so I spend my time looking at real estate listings. I make Tom take me to check out a couple of the listings, including the Tamarak Ski Resort. Apparently, the resort was in full building mode and fell on hard times during the 2008 housing recession, but is making an effort to find new buyers now.

We haven't (yet) found the right house, so we'll just have to keep looking. We spend our last day in McCall on the patio area of the resort listening to music from a music festival wafting across the river. Not a bad way to end a stay.