Lickety-Split, at the Cabin

At first I wanted to call this post "At the cabin, lickety-split," but that would be totally inaccurate. Wilderness is pretty and everything (and around Team Simpson, we are big fans), but it is really bothersome when you are trying to get from one place in Idaho to another and it turns out there are NO ROADS.

The whole gang at the cabin

The chaos that is "doing door prizes." I came away with a new cookbook and an iPod shuffle (yay!).

Basically, it took us a lot of driving to get from the float trip take-out point to the cabin. Challis, where we left our rental car during our trek down the river, is at about the same latitude as McCall, where the family was gathered for the annual family company meeting/get-together/door prize extravaganza, so we had hoped for a short drive straight west. But nooooo, we had to go south...and then north...and then south again...until we landed on Highway 55 just as the road gets windy and sea-sicky along the Payette River to head north for another hour. Good times.

Aunt Mel, Kim, Mom, and me

The girls with the bracelets Mom and Auntie Fay brought from Kenya.

All in all, though, we made it to McCall earlier than expected, in time to scrub the week off of us in hot, soapy showers and throw our damp, sandy clothes in the wash before dinner, in fact, and it ended up being a really lovely weekend. The weather was perfect (no rain!), we told stories about our trip while soaking in the hot tub under the stars, and we got to catch up with everyone in the Bunn family. Jason even did some more fly fishing--I realized after he left the house with Casey that I forgot to warn him that, if he was fishing with my brother, he was not coming back until the wee hours of the morning. Casey is my Gramps, and they are men for whom love of fishing has no end. Luckily for Jason, Kim was with them and brought him home not long after dark.

The cuteness that is Nephew Number Four.

Seriously, if there is one thing I'm good at, it is racking up cute nephews. Hi, cutie Coop!

My goal during my time in Idaho was to get Mason and Troy to recognize me as someone they might someday like. (Cole and I are good friends, and Cooper, well, he loves everyone, so I'm batting .500 right now.) I managed to win Mason over about halfway through the weekend, but, unless you were his now-beloved Uncle Jason, Troy was playing pretty hard to get...until Sunday morning, when we were about to leave. I came downstairs and he was playing with his dad. He looked up and said, "Aunt...Missy?" We have a win, boys! It was a long drive for a short weekend, but oh so fun.