Had a great family vacation recently with 35 family members who descended on the Idaho panhandle through various means of travel and it was fun from start to end.
What a bounty of life the Northwest is. Even hiking is mellow cause the ground is bouncy and spongy from all the fallen debris and rain. Keeps a bounce in your step while hiking. I crossed a few things off my bucket list and also crossed some off I didn’t even know were on that list.
Like when we were foraging for huckleberries, I found my first wild strawberry. It was so damn cute and delicious. We had many fresh handfuls of huckleberries but on our last day, we were treated to huckleberry pancakes and waffles :-) I’m pretty sure huckleberries are not cultivated and only found in the wild…but I’ll have to Google that.
A pleasantly shocking moment was seeing a skinned bear foot in the river, and a moose that was close enough to make me nervous. Caught a fish with a lure for the first time. Caught and ate lake trout…which is more like salmon then what I know here in California as trout. Went mushroom hunting and found hedgehogs, chanterelles and shaggy manes…or I found their poisonous cousins…not sure cause I didn’t eat ’em. Not going to the northwest again without a couple good wild edibles books.
Also saw my boys reel in their first fish :-) Camping is usually cool, but five days of cool is even better.
