Squaw Butte

You may know that my husband and I are not natives to Idaho (unlike our son and kitties) and part of the reason we moved here from California was because we wanted to live somewhere new. Luke has a sense of adventure, loves to travel and we share something of a pioneer spirit. Maybe it’s because in grade school we learned about the pioneers who settled the west, played the computer game Oregon Trail, or studied the settlements of the California missions by the Spaniards. Whatever the reason, my husband has a thirst to see new places.
Recently, for work, he sat down with a counselor to talk about what makes him happy and how he can live a better, fuller, less stressful life. One of the ideas that came from this talk was a goal to see somewhere new each month. For the past few months we’ve been going new places and seeing new things. You can read about our adventures in my previous posts: Outta Town, Shafer Butte, Big Days (and all the posts about our trip to Maine).
Last weekend we took our next adventure to the small farming community of Emmett, Idaho to Squaw Butte. It’s a butte that we can always see from Boise because it appears to be sitting alone, to the west of the foothills. Now, whenever we see it, we can say we’ve been to the top and seen the view. And quite a tender view it is too!
We went with our friends Shaun, Chelsea and Lucy.

My happy husband.

Down in the valley is the town of Sweet, Idaho.

Yes, this strawberry blond baby with a comb-over belongs to me.

My new mommy mobile, a Toyota Highlander, has a V6 engine and 4WD. Making it the perfect vehicle for bombing up the muddy, unpaved roads to the top of the butte.

Chelsea and Lucy, sharing a moment.

This is Luke’s smile, before I made him do it again.
This is his second smile, hmmm.

View from the car window on the way down the butte.

The road to/from the top was open range, moooo! Remember folks, if you hit a marked cow, there’s a “you break it you buy it policy” and you don’t get to keep the cow!
We finished the day at Cold Mountain Creek Restaurant. From the outside it looked a little shady, no windows, but on the inside it’s spacious, clean and there’s no smoking. The food was great and it was definitely a taste of Idaho. A perfect end to our grand mini-adventure.