Before leaving StanleyI slipped out of the room in the wee hours of the morning, shortly after O’dark-thirty, and drove back to the same spot I’d shot the stormy skies over the Sawtooth. Early morning smells, to me, are normally heightened by the fresh air and higher relative humidity, however the skies had cleared and the rain from the previous evening had made the sagebrush smells more intense than the reed diffusers I use in my home. And the views? Incredible!
After checking out of the motel we went back to the same restaurant we’d dined at the previous evening, called ‘The Stanley Baking Company’ located at 14 Wall Street. I highly recommend it for it’s rustic / outdoorsy atmospher AND the amazing food! The waitstaff are friendly and the patrons are equally so and easy to speak with. The natural surroundings seem to allay any stress or anger a person may be carrying around. It is as if the splendor had spoken to the soul as much as the their sight. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to capture a ‘family’ portrait at our newly appointed favorite spot in the world, so we returned to the same vantage point and posed:
The road we traveled took us south and at the edge of town is the road to Redfish Lake, a beautiful high mountain body of water. As we crossed the stream outlet I pulled over and hiked down to the rushing whitewater and found a pair of American Water Dippers (also known as a Water Ouzel) doing their mating thing.
These birds actually walk on the bottom of fast moving streams to feed!
Once out of the Sawtooth National Forest the scenery changed tremendously and the skies around us gave signs of impending storms. The clouds, however were an awesome sight to behold:
