Burned Forests and Idaho City

I expected the drive from Stanley to Boise to be mostly a travel day. Instead, Highway 21 kept giving me reasons to stop. Burned forests covered entire mountainsides, young trees were growing among blackened trunks, and a roadside marker introduced me to Emma Edwards Green. Then I reached Idaho City looking for lunch and ended up spending three hours walking through old streets, reading about gold miners, Chinese merchants, Frank Church, the county courthouse and something I had never heard of before, a pest house. By evening I was finally in Boise, eating pizza, reading about Yellowstone geology and wondering how a simple drive had turned into another full day of discovery.