We are having an unusually harsh winter this year. It is reported that we've had the most snow in the last 40 years. I know for sure that I shoveled more snow than any other year. Our patio cover was damaged by heavy snow. With snow, ice and inversions hanging over our city it is indeed not a very pleasant winter.
We live in Idaho where around 200 hot springs are available for our enjoyment. We have been to few of them and it is wonderful to sit in the hot water to relax and let your stress melt away. What a great way to spend winter days, soaking in a hot spring. But this year with all the snow we are not sure about the road conditions so we were not able to make trip out to a hot spring.
While I was looking at some old pictures I came across this picture from 2006. Oh my goodness, look at our adorable girls. That was 11 years ago. This was our first visit to Goldfork hot spring. This hot spring is located in Donnelly, ID. It is about a 2 hour drive from Boise, but it is worth the drive. My favorite part of this place other than the hot water is that they allow people to bring their own food and drinks. My least favorite part is the lack of changing rooms. We had to share one small room with five or six other people with no privacy.
We visited this hot spring just about once every year since then, but I think we had the most fun on our first trip. Maybe because our kids were little, or maybe because it was new to us. Whatever the reason we really had a good time playing that day.
It is definitely worth it to make a day trip or stop by on your way to and from MaCall.
What do you do when Christmas is over and there are no more twinkling lights to take your mind off of the gray winter and spring is still a few months away?
I love to watch the birds that visit our backyard. I have high hopes of catching a glimpse of mountain blue birds, blue jays or red cardinals, but sadly they don't visit my back yard. I think I live in the wrong place or have the wrong kinds of foods for some of those birds. But I still see few different kinds of birds just looking out my living room window. Just a while ago I saw a really pretty black bird with red on its wings and breast who came to eat berries from my Virginia creeper. It flew off before I could get a good picture of him. How rude! He eats off my plants and didn't even let me take a picture of him. We also have hundreds of house finches that hang around our back yard, but they blend in too well with the trees to get good pictures of them.
Here are some birds that visit our back yard.
This is a Northern Flicker. One of the more rare birds that I saw in my back yard
The Red Robin. They usually come late December and stay until early February.
These are European Starlings. They have a pretty green tint to their feathers. Just the other day one of them flew right into our window and I thought he was dead, but after sitting there for a few minutes he flew off.
I don't know the name of these birds. I don't see them very often and I looked through the Idaho bird identification web page but could not positively identify them.
We have about seven Doves that live in our backyard. We used to have only two but I think that word got out that we have chickens and they can eat our chicken feed.
