For us, the camping "season" has usually ended by October, but this year we decided to try a fall camping trip. We had heard of a forest service cabin that can be rented out for cheap, so we thought it might be fun to incorporate that into our trip. The cabin, located in an area called Squirrel Meadows between Ashton and Island Park, Idaho, is rustic and remote, to say the least. It does not have electricity or running water and is in a meadow surrounded by forest. We took our camp trailer, more or less as a way of hauling all of our needs such as food, blankets, towels, clothes, camping "stuff", etc. Inside the cabin were 3 sets of bunk beds, a kitchen table, a wood burning stove and an old wood burning cooking stove. We were really hoping to capture the fall colors at their peak of change, but when we woke up to rain again on Thursday as we were getting ready to make the 2 hour drive, we realized there was a chance it could be snowing in the mountains.
As we were packing up the car and almost ready to leave, the kids had started to head outside to load up in the car. Nicolas came running back in the house and yelled: "I just saw a moose running down the road!" In my mind I was thinking maybe there was a stray cow from a nearby farm or something, but when I went out onto the porch, sure enough there was a bull moose heading down the road right towards our garden. Chris was able to follow it shortly and take a couple of photos, though they turned out blurry:
After the moose excitement, we finished loading the car and started driving. It was raining on and off all the way. When we arrived in Ashton, we stopped at the US Forest Service building to pick up the keys to the cabin, then continued on for another 20 -30 minutes to get there. By the time we started pulling down the dirt road towards the cabin, the rain had turned to snow.
Chris immediately got to work building a fire in the stove because it was freezing inside the cabin. I set to work putting clean sheets and sleeping bags on all the beds and unloading the things we needed to have inside. The kids started running around outside. One of my worries going into this trip was that this area has a high known grizzly bear population and typically this would have been a time for high bear activity. Luckily, the snow seemed to help keep the bears away because we didn't see any the entire 3-4 days we were there. The rest of the day we spent mostly inside the cabin enjoying the ambiance of the snow falling outside, while we were kept warm by the crackling fire. We went for a short drive and got a few pictures before too much more of the snow fell.
The next morning when we woke up, I went outside and took some photos and video of the crazy amount of snow we had received:
It continued to snow all day. We had planned to go for a drive to look for wildlife and take photos of the trees and mountains. We did venture out for one drive, but the roads were pretty messy - bumpy, gravel, backwoods roads, now covered with 6 or more inches of snow. We ended up just coming back to the cabin where the kids played out in the snow and we had hot chocolate and played games.
The next day was a little better, as far as the weather was concerned. It was foggy in the morning, but that burned off as the sun started to come up. After breakfast and some more playing in the snow, we ventured out again, this time driving up towards Yellowstone. We made the scenic drive to Cave Falls, then came back and enjoyed an evening campfire, complete with s'mores and stories.
It was kind of a bummer that we didn't get to see any wildlife, apart from a couple of red-headed woodpeckers and a rare siting of some kind of Fisher or Pine Martin (we're not sure what it was exactly, kind of looked like a weasel only much bigger). But we all had a good time and were sad to come home and leave the tranquility of the wilderness behind. Then again, we were all dirty and ready for warm showers and our own beds!
