Idaho City Letterboxing with Pixie Dust Gal

Last weekend I introduced Pixie Dust Gal (Kelly) to Idaho City for the very first time.  In over 11 years in Idaho she had never visited.  Kelly and I have a list of items we want to do together this year (yes, we finally had to make a list) and this was one of the items.  She originally had plans on Sunday but they fell through so we quickly seized the opportunity and drove up in the Mustang for the afternoon. 

The timing as far a Letterboxing was not perfect as Atlas Quest was under construction and I was only able to pull clues off of LBNA for her.  Still we made due with the ones I was able to access and hit the road.  Our first box was in really bad shape, stamp gone, smashed and soaked so we pulled it and continued on our way. 

We stopped for lunch at Trudy's and we really lucked out as it rained while we were inside dry and warm enjoying late afternoon pie indulgences.  Kelly could not decide on which flavor sounded the best so she took pie home to share.  I'll need to remember that next time too.  My only disappointment was that they did not have lemon meringue available on this visit.

Back on the trail we visited the visitors center (nabbed a Letterbox), stopped in a couple of stores (Kelly found a birthday gift) and picked up flyers for the Idaho City Walking Tour and the self guided Pioneer Cemetery Tour.  Our time was limited to take the walking tour as it was late afternoon but we did visit the cemetery and Kelly was able to locate two additional letterboxes with a bit of help since we had no clues. 

The cemetery was established during the early part of the gold rush (1860's) and there are actually estimated to be 3,000 people buried in the cemetery although fewer than 300 have historic graves that are identified.  And out of the first 200 only 28 died of natural causes.  All the bodies from the Chinese section of the cemetery have been removed and returned to China.  This has always been a favorite cemetery of mine.  I really love the towering trees, old iron work and historic stonework.  Kelly does not quite share my enthusiasm of visiting cemeteries as she is prone to getting the willies just a bit.  I don't at all so we made sure to be off the hill before dusk threatened.  This explains why Kelly is the Cute Kelly and I am the Creepy Kelly.  Really a good mix between the two of us.  She keeps us in the light and I tend to drag us into the dark. 

Kelly and I will both need to re-visit the area eventually.  Kelly to actually take the walking tour in town and find the other letterboxes she missed and I need to do some box maintenance back at the cemetery.  My logbook is wet and we did not have time to dry it out.

We also hit one additional cemetery in Boise on our way home so Kelly could find an additional box of mine.  The sun was still up and the box was in good shape.  We made it back home before 7:00 p.m.  Pretty good timing considering it was a spur of the moment adventure.