Lookout Butte

Yesterday was yet another hot one here in Kamiah so we decided to drive out in the woods and up over 4,000 feet in elevation to Lookout Butte. It is a 60- foot high fire lookout tower, originally built in 1923, while the current one was built in 1962. You can actually rent the "cabin" on top of the tower and spend the night there. I think that would be quite the fun and unique experience, but you really have to make sure you have what you need and hunker down when it gets dark because I wouldn't want to walk down those 60 feet of steep stairs at night (not quite sure what to do when you have to use the outhouse...).

It was a mini adventure for us to find this lookout tower. We have some sort of annoying issue with forest roads- whenever there is a choice to make, we somehow always choose the wrong one. The regular wood signs directing people to the tower were down for some reason. In their place were paper plates with "lookout tower" written in PENCIL! They could not even take the time to scrounge up a Sharpie. One paper plate sign was actually just laying on the ground with a rock on top of it. We never even saw these "signs" until we had already exhausted all other road options and had finally decided to try the correct route on our own. Seriously, whoever was in charge of putting up temporary signs to the lookout should receive some sort of disciplinary action because he did a very poor job and we ended up wasting a lot of time and gas.

The scenery and cooler weather were very nice, but the most exciting part of the day was our wildlife sightings. Even though Idaho is full of wildlife, we see disappointingly few animals besides deer. In places like Denali or Yellowstone, there are wide open spaces perfect for viewing wildlife, but in a heavily forested place like where we live you can pretty much only see animals when they run across the road right in front of your car. Yesterday, as we were driving near the top of the mountain we saw a black bear! This is the first black bear we have seen in the Kamiah area (and we have lived here 4 years).  Then, on the way back down the mountain we saw a bobcat! This is only the second bobcat I've seen in my life (the first one was surprisingly in a Florida state park when I was a kid). It was pretty amazing to see both a black bear and a bobcat in the same day. We unfortunately don't have any pictures of them because we only saw each of them for a few seconds as they darted in front of us. We just have to keep the memory of them etched in our minds.

Here are the pictures we do have from the trip:

 bear paw prints in dried mud (we at least have evidence there are bears in the area, since we don't have a picture of the actual bear we saw)

 

 Two snakes hanging out together

 

 the steep stairs going up to the cabin at the top

 

 the view from the top of the tower

 

 It took us so long to find it that we saw the beginning of sunset from the top of the tower.

 

Lookout Butte Fire Tower