Bonus: Activity #10, Snowmobiling in Island Park

Ok, so you're probably thinking this is not my normal thing for the blog and you're right. I took this opportunity to go snowmobiling with a friend out in Island Park over the weekend. Fortunately he had an extra snowmobile and gear that I was able to use. It certainly isn't a cheap hobby but man this was so much fun! It was my first time riding on a snowmobile and I was able to learn the ropes pretty quick.

We left on Friday evening after our classes for Island Park. Island Park is about an hour north of Rexburg off of Highway 20 and my buddy's cabin was a few miles into Island Park. I was very excited to arrive and get ready for the morning time. We actually spent some of our night working on homework so we wouldn't have to worry about it over the weekend. It was worth it to be bookworms that night for a full day of fun on Saturday.

In the morning, we got all of our things together and started putting on the gear. I don't think I have ever put on so many layers of clothing in my life (4) but it was needed to stay warm on the ride. The temperature was going to be an unusually "warm" 25 degrees for the day. It still felt like 0 degrees when riding around which is still dang cold to me.

Snowmobiles are really fast. Did you know that? I was surprised at the speed and went as fast as 65mph on the snow. Just make sure to not hit anything or you're toast. I was able to hit that speed on the main road we traveled for many miles to come to an area my buddy usually rides at. The trail was so much fun with lots of bumps and slopes to catch some air. Many times we were off the trail doing some exploring which was fun but made me get stuck a lot because I didn't have as powerful of a snowmobile.

We did get caught in a messy situation. Some really bad fog started to settle at higher points of the trail in the afternoon which brought the visibility down to like 50 feet. We ended up getting lost for about an hour which certainly had me stressed because we were riding in circles trying to get back to the main trail. Imagine being in a large open field with a couple of feet deep snow with no landmarks around and you can't see far ahead. It's easy to lose a sense of direction and luckily we had the compasses working on our iPhones to continue traveling in a certain direction. Once we were out of that, we continued playing around on huge hills and finding new places to ride.

We got back to the cabin at dusk having done a full day's worth of riding. It was a ton of fun but surprisingly exhausting from maneuvering the whole snowmobile on hills and turns. My body was feeling it on our ride home and this morning when I woke up.

If you have connections and haven't done snowmobiling before, you've gotta go for it! It turns a nasty snow day into an all out blast. I'm glad I was able to experience it for my last weekend in Idaho because I graduate this coming week.

Activity #9 Sheep Creek Mountains

I decided to go out again on Tuesday morning to do another day activity because I had no classes for school. I wanted to use my free day in Idaho before Thanksgiving in a way I thought productive. I went back out to Swan Valley because of the numerous amounts of trails that are available.

This time I went to Sheep Creek trail. The road to turn onto from Swan Valley highway is just a little before the huge reservoir on the right.  There is a noticeable brown sign on the right indicating the turn off from the highway just before the turn.

The trail head is about 2 miles back in. This area didn't have as much snow as last week but was certainly more wooded than the other area. When I arrived at the trail head, I was definitely in solitude and felt a little uneasy hiking alone this particular spot. If I had someone else with me then this would have been a great trail to check out. I got back in my car and drove back down the road a little bit. This is where I decided to climb a mountain off to the side that was very much in the open to reduce what I thought the chance of running into some dangerous wildlife.

I parked my car right after the intersection to continue on Forest Road 260. With the car parked on the right side of the road, I got out and started the climb up the mountain to the right. It felt cool to not be on a trail and do some free hiking. This was the interesting part. I thought a more open area would be a less of a chance to run into wildlife but I actually ran into a pack of 10 deer that were together about midway up which I took a video of.

The top of this particular point was beautiful to see and I sat at the top for a bit. I had full bars of signal for my phone which was amusing to me and very convenient to send pictures to friends and family. The way up was steep and I definitely had to consider my steps and be careful going up at some parts. I had to do the same coming down the mountain.

Overall I really liked this activity. It was different than I planned to do but that's what made it fun and adventurous. This was about a half days worth of an activity and I was back in Rexburg at about 12:30 PM. I left earlier in the morning around 8:30 AM.