Blazing Trails For Me!

This past Saturday was National Trails Day and I spend the day on a trail maintenance project with ITA (Idaho Trails Association) and REI. We met up at the Boise BLM office to get situated and then headed down to Perjue Canyon in the desert of the Owyhees. In total, we hiked about 10 miles and spent a fair amount of time widening the trail by trampling small plants that had sprouted up in the trail and by cutting back plants that were growing out across the trail. There is still PLENTY of work to be done on that trail, but we did as much as we could with the timeframe we had.
It was a beautiful hike through the canyon. The trail followed and crossed (several times) a small creek that flowed through the canyon, creating unexpected stretches of lush riparian areas in what would otherwise be a stark, dry desert canyon.
I am really enjoying these trail building and maintenance projects and hope to continue participating in them, even after I have left Idaho! In fact, I have signed up for another project with the Winter Wildlands Alliance towards the middle/end of June, so I'll be looking forward to that!
How Neat Is That?!

 

Perjue's cabin- the namesake for the trail

We were literally in the middle of nowhere

This was the ONLY bunch of these pretty purple flowers in the entire area we hiked!