| Up early and too early to check out, so I had a little time to kill and wandered around Boise a bit more. This is the Cyrus Jacobs home. Built in 1864, it is the oldest surviving brick dwelling in Boise. |
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| Not far away from the hotel is the Basque Block. Basque immigrants settled in this area of town in the late 19th and early 20th century. |
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| The Anduiza Hotel and Fronton. The
Basque immigrants brought the game of pelota to Idaho. A fronton was
added to this boarding house that also served as a dance hall. Of course, pelota is the Spanish word for ball, so they named the game "ball". Not terribly inventive. |
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| It was a cool morning, pleasant for a stroll. This is the Egyptian Theatre, just two years short of its centennial. |
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| This building was once the home of the Boise City National Bank. Now there is a restaurant and probably some other things in it. I like when cities keep their older buildings and repurpose them instead of tearing them down to put up some modern monstrosity. |
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| I looked online before I left the room that morning to see what might be interesting in town. One thing that came up was Freak Alley. |
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| It is a small section with lots of murals and graffiti art. |
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| I like the MLK one with the "They will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" quote on it. I don't know why that idea has gone out out of fashion these days. |
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| I'm not much of a fan of graffiti art, but this kind of thing is better than some dumbass just spray painting something on the side of a building without permission. |
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| I mean it is art I guess. |
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| A ghost sign. I do like those. Leaving them on the sides of buildings is a great and simple way to preserve a bit of history. |
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| So I finally checked out and hit the road. See, more segue pictures. |
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| Once again it is onto an unpaved road. |
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| This would be a day of ghost towns. The first was Placerville. |
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| The Magnolia Saloon and the Boise Basin Mercantile appear to be museums now. |
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| Established in 1863, I guess it's more of a semi-ghost town these days. There are around fifty residents. |
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| These towns always seemed to have a Masonic lodge. |
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| Despite using Apple Maps through CarPlay, I brought printed maps with the routes I would be taking. This is good for when there is no cell coverage and navigation on the app became impossible. It was here that I first had to rely on the printed map, as I was thinking I had to go back out of town before I realized I had to go through. |
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| I was watching some video about road building in the west and it was said that the easiest way to do so in mountainous areas was to follow rivers. There will be a lot of driving along side the paths of rivers, creeks and streams. |
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| This is the South Fork Payette River. |
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| Every now and again I would stop on the side of the road for a scenic photo. |
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| I mean, come on. Does a view get any better than this? Of course, if you lived all the way out here it would take forever to get to the nearest grocery store and I doubt there are many medical facilities nearby, but at least you would die of starvation looking at this stunning vista. |
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| I think this is in the Salmon-Challis National Forest. Honestly, I was in and out of so many national forests I kind of lost track. |
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| But anyway, there were a few places to go in the Land of Yankee Fork State Park. |
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| The first on way was Bonanza. |
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| There's not much left here but a few old buildings. There was a small road that led to a cemetery, but it was a bit longer and smaller than I wanted to travel. |
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| Just past Bonanza was the Yankee Fork Gold Dredge. It is not exacrtly Old West, having operated between 1940 and 1952. |
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