Road Trip Month Post #3: Kayaking/Camping at Murtaugh Lake County Park, Idaho

   It's not a very good feeling to drive all day, fail to pre-plan and/or make any reservations, and then try to find a decent campground for the night. As we left Oregon for neighboring Idaho things weren't looking good. Luckily we were using a pretty sweet road trip/campground app on the iPhone to aid in our search for a perfect, close, cheap, not-too-crowded campground.

   Even with the app we still pretty much stumbled upon the Lake Murtaugh campground (map link). The lake, the weather, the campground, & the light for photos was perfect with a lot of unexpected beauty (weren't we in a wheat field 5 mins ago?). Luckily we were only staying for one night - the campground hosts warned us that the entire place was booked the next day for a huge biker party. 

   "You folks will have your hands full tomorrow," I said when they told us about the
     bikers.
   "Oh, we're not staying," said the hosts, "we're outta here!"

   Huh. Apparently the actual campground owners were coming to hold down the fort with the 200 or so bikers (they must be the sort-of-owners because the place is listed as a county park - whatever that means). Our hosts were off the hook. Sounds like fun…sort of.

   My best friend and I had a gorgeous golden hour paddle in the small lake. We camped underneath a group of trees that happened to have a giant nest of pretty big baby birds. There was a good amount of tweeting.

   Murtaugh Lake County Park was perfect and I highly recommend it if you're looking for a  beautiful & cheap ($5 for a tent site) camp site with water access…watch out for biker festivals and it's probably a good idea to check the trees for big baby bird nests before settling down!
   ~Paul & Micah     ETC