Days 7 and 8: From tiny cells to wide open spaces

In Boise, we went to the Old Idaho Penitentiary, which opened in the 1870s and operated until the 1970s. This prison was certainly NOT cushy and quite a few prisoners were hung there over the years. Within the prison was a fantastic weapons exhibit, which had swords, guns, etc. from the bronze age through to the civil war and the world wars.







After leaving the penitentiary, we headed north along the Payette River Scenic Byway, encountering much scenery in the process:







With all the scenic byways we’re travelling on, we’ve started referring to many things as scenic, or – as we like to pronounce it – “skee-nik”. For example “That’s quite a skeenik river over there, wouldn’t you say?” “Oh yes, quite skeenik”. We find exchanges such as this to be rather entertaining on our long drives.

That night, we stayed in McCall, which looked like it’d be a cute alpine village in the winter - lots of chalets and little cafés. In summer, water sports seem to be the big thing, since McCall is on Lake Payette:



The following day, we crossed over from Idaho into Oregon, and drove along Hells Canyon Scenic Byway to Halfway. Lots of winding roads on the sides of mountains, plus more hydroelectric plants on rivers. Halfway is a pretty damn tiny town, and our GPS struggled to get us to our accommodation (it’s powered by WhereiS, which adds to my hatred of WhereiS – it has nothing on Google Maps). We finally ended up at a gorgeous bed and breakfast on a working cattle ranch – The Inn at Clear Creek Farm. The Inn was beautifully decorated, as you can see in the photos below:





We were the only guests in the big old house that night, so once our host left us alone (after baking us some cookies and making iced tea), we were free to run amok and take stupid photos:







After this, we went for a wander around the property, which had some plum and apple trees as well as cattle. I was excited by my find of a ripe, non-worm-eaten apple:





The apple was delicious, but dinner that night was an interesting experience. First we dodged some vagrant cows on the way into town (free range cows are common around these parts):



Then, after the shocking revelation that the only restaurant in town was out of pizza, Matt ordered “finger steaks”. These weren’t really fingers of steak – they kind of looked like diced steak crumbed and deep fried, served with a big pile of chips. My cheeseburger wasn’t exactly healthy, but at least it had a piece of tomato on it! My guess is they serve very little that can’t be kept frozen.

As we arrived back at the Inn – after dodging more cows – some kind of creature ran behind a piece of farm equipment in the driveway and all we could see was its eyes reflecting the headlights. We had no idea if it was a skunk or a fox (we’ve seen both on this trip), so Matt kept the headlights on it while I ran into the house like the frightened child I am. Matt made it safely inside soon after, then we proceeded to watch Anchorman before hitting the hay.