Island Park Idaho

In an effort to help you find some of the places of beauty here in Island Park, we continue our Makin’ The Loop series. This week’s loop has spectacular views and somewhat less dirt road than last week’s installment.

For lack of a better name, I’m going to call this loop the Black Canyon Loop. Start at Macks Inn and travel east on the south Big Springs Loop road. Go about 3 miles east (past the old railroad bed about 1/2 a mile) to the sign that says Black Canyon. Take the Black Canyon road to the south and stay on it (don’t be confused by the fish creek loop which turns off to the right. Stay on Black Canyon.)

The Black Canyon road will climb more than a thousand feet above Island Park giving you spectacular views of the surrounding area. Eventually the road will turn to the south and follow the ridge southward. Within a few miles, pavement magically appears and you will be on a paved road all the way to Warm River (about 40 - 45 miles.)

Cross Warm River and turn northward up past Bear Gulch, Mesa Falls, Etc. That’s old highway 191 and will eventually connect to highway 20 which will lead you northward back to Macks Inn. The whole trip is about 100 - 120 miles and probably 80 of those miles are paved.

Very few people travel the Black Canyon portion of the loop, and it’s a shame. Because some of the best views of Island Park are to be found on this loop. Go in the evening and you will be rewarded by the best sunset views anywhere in Island Park. The Black Canyon portion is remote, so have a good spare tire, water, food and plenty of gas. Also, you’re going to want your camera.

See you out there makin’ the loop!

If you’ve been to Big Springs to feed the fish, you have seen the cute little cabin that sits on the east side of the spring. It was built by John Sack around the turn of the last century and is almost one of the icons of Island Park.

Sack was a cabinet and furniture maker who was one of the early settlers of Island Park. His cabin has been preserved just as it was in the good old days and is now a museum of sorts for that time period. Sack, being a vertically challenged individual (4′ 11″,) built everything to fit himself, so the cabin is almost like a doll house (with a manly feel, of course.) The house looks like Sack just walked out this morning, leaving it exactly as it was.

If you would like to step back 100 years in time, turn east at Macks Inn on the Big Springs Road and come between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. any day. There is no charge to tour the cabin but be aware that it is donations from visitors that keeps the project going, so please be generous. In case you’re wondering (like I always am) photography IS allowed, so please bring your camera, but remember to be courteous to other visitors when it comes to using your flash (if you can take your photos without a flash, that’s even better.)

See you there!

For the last 40 plus years I have been a dedicated mushroom hunter. I suppose there may be better places to look for mushrooms than Island Park, but I don’t know of them. This is where I’ve lived and this is where I go hunting.

Mushrooms need the right circumstances to grow: shade, decaying logs, plenty of rain and mild temperatures. We’ve had all of those lately. For the last 16 days in a row it has been cloudy, rainy and generally perfect conditions for mushrooms.

The snootier mushroom hunter looks for morel mushrooms. They’re rare, the taste is incomparable, they don’t grow just anywhere and they are the holy grail of mushrooms. To say I like them would be an understatement. I never pass them by, of course. But I don’t get tunnel vision and think they’re the only thing worth eating, either.

There are ten to fifteen different types of edible mushrooms in Island Park (probably more than that, but there are at least that many that I’m aware of.) All of them taste good and all of them have their own flavor profile. Some go better in spaghetti, some are good in salads and some are best just fried in a little (or a lot of) butter. But one thing is certain, no matter how you use them, they are all a delightful addition to your diet.

If you would like to go mushroom hunting in Island Park, be sure you go with someone who knows the local ’shrooms. Some are heavenly and some (that look just like them) are poisonous. So you have to be careful. But if you can find a mentor, and you like mushrooms, within a few short minutes from any campground, you can be in fungus heaven. Bring your gear and we’ll see you in the woods.

While it’s true that all but the hardest core of the snowmobilers have started their annual migration away from Mecca, there is another group that is just getting going — the kite boarders.  I don’t know if you’ve seen these guys, but they are certifiably crazy.

Sure snowmobilers blast down the trails at 70 plus miles and hour.  Sure they take turns too fast and go where they ought not, from time to time.  But one thing separates them from the kite boarders: they have brakes.

Kite boarders have no such thing.  They also blast across (or sometimes above) the snow at speeds approaching mach 9 with no brakes (as near as I can tell,) no steering to speak of, and no apparent way to save their own lives.

For the uninitiated, kite boarders strap on a snow board, then attach themselves to a parachute.  Sailing upwind (across the wind, actually) they are able to reach speeds well in excess of the wind velocity.  What happens if they hit a bump?  They’re airborne  –  sometimes for hundreds of feet (I think that may be some of the “fun” of kite boarding.)

The thing I haven’t figured out is what you do when you want to stop.  I mean, there’s still a parachute out there dragging you across the snow.  Maybe it’s like riding a tiger.  You don’t ride ’til you get tired, you ride ’til the tiger gets tired.  I guess when the wind stops blowing, you can reel in the parachute and go home.  Let’s see.  In Island Park, that would be about July.