Sage Hen Reservoir

We’ve been wanting to blog about the things we have been doing out here in Boise, but we’ve been so busy doing them that we haven’t had time!


For Father’s Day weekend, we rounded up our camping gear and took to the mountains of Idaho for a weekend camping trip. After consulting local specialists and doing some research of our own, we set out for Sage Hen Reservoir. We got an early start Friday afternoon, inched our way up the hills, through pastures, up to the tree line and finally caught a glimpse of the picturesque lake. Unfortunately, the thing we were hoping we wouldn’t see was visible in abundance: other people! One reason we chose Sage Hen Reservoir was because we thought it would be far enough in the country that there wouldn’t be many people. However, probably due mostly to the fact that it was Father’s Day weekend, all six of the campsites were full! There were trailers all around, four wheelers rumbling to and fro, and families packed in the sites like sardines. I was appalled—this was not at all my idea of camping. Luckily, in talking with one of the camp directors, there was a camp site farther back that was “tents only”. It’s amazing to me that “camping” no longer implies sleeping in a tent. Anything more than sleeping under the stars, on the rocky ground, breathing the cold air isn’t camping to me. So, we were able to get into a camp site that was nice and quiet, isolated from the craziness that was the other six camp sites.




Each year we try to add an item to our camping equipment, and since it’s winter in Idaho eight months out of the year, it had been a long time since we’d used our equipments. Since last year, we have added a water purifier so we were excited to try it out. The water looked clean, but it still tasted kind of fishy.





Of course, we had to have roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for dinner and dessert (no camping trip is complete without them).

The next morning, I got up bright and early to do some fishing on the reservoir. The fishing was better in the morning than in the afternoon, but I didn’t have our camera with me to prove it. That afternoon, we hiked all the way around the reservoir and did some fishing along the way. It was a beautiful area and we’d recommend it to anyone wanting a pleasant place to camp.