Our Bogus Friday.

Last Friday was a glorious, clear spring day with temps in the mid 70s (much like this Friday, actually), so O and I decided to skip out on our usual chores and take a short drive into the hills above Boise to the ski area called, amusingly enough, Bogus Basin.

We've had so much rain this year that usually brown hills were mostly green.

There were plenty of wildflowers. 

Thanks to Steve Smith, we now know that these are arrowleaf balsamroot, 

also called Oregon sunflowers. You're looking at downtown Boise 

with the Owyhees in the background.

Once we passed the ski area, the dirt road curved around 

to the north side of the Boise ridge, and we began to see 

patches of snow and lots of little waterfalls fed by the snowmelt.

Lining the sides of the road were patches of delicate glacier lilies (Erythronium grandiflorum).

Looking north, we saw a beautiful panorama of the back country, with the peaks of the Sawtooth Mountains in the distance.

Though the south side of Bogus was completely devoid of snow, the north slope was still covered.

We enjoyed the rocky scenery as we cruised along the empty roads, but eventually our path was blocked by a huge snowdrift that we could neither go over or around.

The wet winter left the trees covered in fluorescent green moss.

It was a lovely was to spend a Friday afternoon.

P.