Watkins Family: Island Park (Mack's Inn)

Last week Tiff and I headed up to Mack's Inn in Island Park for a few days of fun. A good friend of mine, Drew, works up there and runs a dinner theater. He hooked us up with the cabin below and dinner and show every night we were there.

The cabin was nice and cozy, and most import kept the animals out. Our first adventure up there was a drive up Sawtell Peak. Sawtell Peak, the picture below, is one of the great peaks that overlooks Island Park and sits right around 10,000 feet in elevation.

The drive was beautiful and scenic until the very end when the road switch backs up the mountain. Luckily no cars passed us because there was no way I was getting over in my lane. I usually don't get too nervous around high cliff roads, but this one dropped off thousands of feet and was pretty scary.

Up on top it was nice and flat with a 360 degree panoramic view of Island Park. The air was smoky with all of the wild fires burning in the area, so some of our views were limited.

Behind me is the great Henry's Lake that I fished last year, and will be returning to again in October.

If this picture was clear, you would be able to see, Island Park reservoir and a lot of the Henrys Fork of the Snake River.

The next morning we planned a hike along Targhee Creek. This was suppose to be a nice easy hike, but the only draw back was that this area is the home of a Grizzly Bear. Hiking in Grizz country, where one has been spotted frequently had Tiff on edge. So we brought along a little bit of extra gear. Our two cans of bear spray were probably plenty, but you never can be too careful.

The trail followed along side Targhee Creek for the first 3 miles and then starts to switch back up the mountain. We followed the trail for about 3.5 miles before deciding to turn around.

There were a couple of places where we had to cross the creek and the thick trees had Tiffany really nervous. We read that you should make a lot of noise while hiking in bear country, which Tiffany did a lot of.

What was that noise?

Floating the Henry's Fork River.

Part of the Henry's Fork comes out of Henry's Lake but the other part is a spring creek and you can see big bubbles of water coming right out of the ground.

Some German dude built this cabin years ago right where the water comes out of the ground.

We floated a 5 miles section of the river in a canoe. The river is very calm, as you can see, with absolutely no rapids.

It was a very scenic float, and Tiff quickly figured out how to paddle a canoe by herself, since I was fishing half of the time.

On our whole trip we did not see any animals except for some baby ducks in the river.

In the evening we went to the Playhouse dinner theater for a prime rib dinner and a show. We saw two different shows: Three Amigos, and one Drew wrote called Home School Musical. Drew is one of the funniest people I have ever met. A lot of times he would start to make stuff up on the fly, and at times had the whole cast and audience in tears laughing. If you are every in Island Park, you definitely need to stop and see one of his shows. Our last night there, they pulled two people from the audience, which one happened to be me. Drew promised that it was a mistake, however he did embarrass me pretty good and had me sing "I'm a little tea pot" by myself.