Ghosts towns were the allure of the day. We traveled north of Stanley following the Salmon River. The scenery is incredible. Due to the high humidity it was easy to see where the hot springs were – clouds of mist just rise up and out of the sides of the riverbanks. We turned up the Yankee Fork Creek to explore the old mining towns. The pristine river soon turned into an ugly tract of overturned river rock. We traveled 5 miles through this landscape before finding the huge dredge responsible for this sight. We had a wonderful tour through the monstrous piece of machinery. By the end, I had a new perspective on what had happened in the valley. We then moved on to the ghost town of Custer – named after the newly deceased General Custer. We met some lovely Forest Service people there – Jennifer taught us how to pan and we each found a fleck of gold in our pans. We were panning gravel that had been dug up from a section of the creek that the dredge missed. There is still a lot of gold there! When traveling back down the Creek we had a new appreciation for the “rock piles” and noticed their distinct pattern of deposit.
On our return to the campground we stopped in Stanley to call Dad and download to the blog. While sitting there a flurry moved through followed by another downpour.
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