In Pursuit of Huckleberries

This is my ninth summer living in Idaho. I figured it was high time to go pick huckleberries...the official fruit of Idaho...enough to make some jam or syrup. Dad had come up to Idaho with LeAnn, so off he and I went to the Kelly Canyon area and then down along the dirt road that follows the Snake River canyon between Swan Valley and Heise.

The first part of this pursuit was a fun, beautiful drive along the Snake River. This is the part of the river that you don't see when you are on Hwy 26 driving to/from Swan Valley and Ririe. In fact, I had no idea how beautiful this stretch of river is. Is is quite remote...yet a very popular place for people to bring their RVs to camp.

Then we headed back up toward Kelly Canyon. I found a place to park (won't disclose where that was) and I went of to find some huckleberries. Dad stayed back at the Explorer. I was walking along thinking to myself that I really didn't know what huckleberry plants looked like...but admiring the beautiful Indian Paintbrush flowers nonetheless.

Well, as I was taking some pictures of the flowers, right there in front of me were the huckleberries. A lot of them!!!! After I picked for about 15 minutes I went back to the car to tell Dad that I was not lost...I was just going to spend a while picking huckleberries. We both then went back to where I was picking the huckleberries. If you've never seen them, this is how they look.

Success!!! I combined the huckleberries with some raspberries from my garden and made some yummy jam. Mmmmmmm.