September 8-11 Boise and Bruneau Dunes State Park

With Labor Day weekend out of the way we headed for Boise for a Costco, Winco, and Pet Smart run.  On the way I spotted a lot full of new Airstream Travel Trailers aka known as "silver bullets".  I've been wanting to see some of the new Airstream  Travel Trailers and dealerships are rare.  I've been considering getting a small travel trailer ever since I sold my Born Free.  I convinced Joel to stop and look.  Big mistake.  Two days later I dodged the "bullet" and left with my wallet in tact,  but when the timing is right...well I'll be back, unless I can find a preowned one that is in pristine condition.

One night we stayed at the Elks Club near the Airstream dealership in Caldwell.  Pretty noisy  and too much light so moved to Lucky Peak View Point just a few miles east of Boise.  This is what makes boon docking so much fun.  No noise and a gorgeous view from the window:

After filling the frig, freezer, and pantry,  and making the wallet much lighter we headed for Bruneau Dunes State Park, which is about an hours drive south east of Boise and off the beaten path.  There is an observatory located in the state park and a "star party" was scheduled for the weekend so site were scare. Had we known about the event, we probably wouldn't not have ventured here.  A site was secured ( there were only two unreserved sites left) and the park was really crowded so we didn't take part in the star party at the observatory.  The dunes were interesting and if it hadn't been so hot (high 90s) I might have rented a sand board to slide down the dunes.  I used to slide on the dunes at Asilomar Beach as kid, but card board was my mode of sliding.  There was no such thing as sand boards back then.

Bruneau Dunes is the largest single structure dunes in North America.  I was expecting white sandy dunes, but they are more grayish in color.

There are several small lakes in the park and I had picked up a brochure describing the various points of interest and  1.3 miles level walk around the lake.  So we started out on the short little walk which seemed to get longer and longer and none of the points on the brochure were matching up.  I finally figured out we were on the wrong lake and our short little walk turned into a 2 1/2 hour ordeal.  Oh well. We saw some beautiful dunes and Tara loved the water.