Hiking Copper Creek Falls

Inland Empire Travelog #7
Almost Canada, Idaho - Sat, 15 May 2021. 10:30am.

This morning we've driven up from Bonners Ferry, Idaho to almost the Canadian border. We're so close to the border that our phones are pinging off cell towers in Canada and helpfully telling us that we're now roaming internationally. Memo to self: fight with Verizon next week to get these stupid international roaming charges removed.

What are we doing here? Hiking to a waterfall, of course. In this case, Copper Creek Falls. It's one of the tallest waterfalls in Idaho, with a drop of over 100 feet.



A short but steep trail led up from an ill marked trailhead on a dirt and gravel forest service road. On the flip side, the benefit of being way out here in booger country (as one of our favorite outdoors authors memorably calls it) is that we have it to ourselves. Ah, solitude! We enjoyed the trail and lingered at the viewpoint with nobody else around. Coming from crowded California that's quite a change of pace!

Alas nothing lasts forever, not even solitude in booger country. As we returned to the trailhead two other sets of people had just arrived in their cars.

"How did you find this place?" they wanted to know.

"Probably the same way as you, dumbass," I thought as I said something polite instead. I mentioned The Very Dull (and Frequently Erroneous) Book of Waterfalls... though this time it had steered us right.

Smith Creek Falls. Back to Bonners Ferry.

Inland Empire Travelog #8
Bonners Ferry, Idaho - Sat, 15 May 2021. 1pm.

We're back in Bonners Ferry having just finished lunch here. This morning we traveled up north to near the border with Canada to hike Copper Creek Falls (previous entry) and then hunt for Smith Creek Falls. I say hunt for because Smith Creek was another wild goose chase courtesy of inaccurate directions and lack of field proofing in Prof. Smedley Q. Boredom's Very Dull Book of Waterfalls. Though this time we drove around until we caught the damn goose. By which I mean we did find the falls.



Smith Creek Falls was only a few miles and a wrong turn from where Smedley said it was. And the falls were on private property marked with copious "no trespassing" signs (there was even a big one on the bridge in the scene above; I cropped it out) so we admired them from the shoulder of the road.

I've written before that sometimes wrong turns can be serendipitous. In losing one thing and seeking to find it, sometimes we find another, too. Today we found, and enjoyed, this view of the Kootenai River valley:



By the way, the left edge of the picture above is Canada. I mentioned we were close to the border... that's how close we were.

Our plans for the rest of the day are all well south of the border so we drove back down to Bonners Ferry. It was a good time for lunch, anyway, and Bonners Ferry is the first town of any size.

While noshing on barely tolerable burgers at a local joint with a nice outdoors table I was amused by this view across the street:



Yes, it's just a gas station. But the price is under $3 per gallon! And it's not just this one station; it's most of them. Meanwhile, back in California, the cheapest discount stations near home are about $3.79/gal and the name-brand stores are all over $4.