Autumn in Idaho, 9.23.19 - 9.28.19, Part 2 of 4
While Shoshone Falls and Craters of the Moon were both really cool, by the time I went to bed that third night I was really chomping at the bit to see some Sawtooths. The internet can be an amazing tool. I first checked the weather forecast for the next morning. I had been watching it daily for weeks and this last ten day period had been all over the board between sun, partly cloudy, rain and even snow. It’s usually pretty accurate within a 24 hour period and it called for a clear morning, 31 degrees and sunrise at exactly 7:30AM. My second bit of information I had found before leaving on the trip and that was where the best places to shoot photography around the Stanley area were. I found one site that recommended three specific spots. I had seen one of them the day before and it was barely a mile closer to Stanley from our camp at a small pullout on the side of the highway. Another was in Stanley itself, taking a street to the top of a hill in the parking lot of a meditation chapel. This was where I decided to go to see the sun rise on the Sawtooth Mountains. I was up and out at 6:15 while the sky was still dark. I drove into Stanley, got a hot coffee and followed a street up and behind town to the parking lot at the chapel. There, splayed out before me in Cinerama IMAX whatever was a panorama of epic beauty. If I was to ask you what image comes to mind when I say “The West”, what would you say? For me, this specific spot was the epitome of that term. It’s The Cartwrights coming at you out of a blazing map, it’s John Wayne with the reins in his teeth firing with both hands. This is the place I came to love from a black and white Zenith TV. And I was at what felt like the epicenter watching the sun give birth to a new day.
The rising sun breaks the horizon
First rays of the day
The Dawn Hour
I LOVED the fences
The Sawtooths
Big meadows
Stark Sawtooths
Sawtooth panorama
For all the mountain geeks!
Here comes Part 3...