Kirkham Hot Springs + kayaking Redfish Lake in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains

We spent the last two days backpacking to and from Alice Lake in Idaho's Sawtooth Wilderness, a place we have wanted to visit for years and it totally exceeded our expectations. It's unfortunately our last day in the mountains but we're going to make the most of it starting with a first for us. Idaho is home to tons of hot springs and we recently realized we haven't even been in one. What the heck? So this morning we're changing that by visiting Kirkham Hot Springs, a popular hot spring about an hour from the Sawtooth Mountains. Got my hot spring outfit on, got my winter coat, the bathing suit underneath, my joggers, and some Chacos. If you haven't picked up on it yet we are travel YouTube fashion superstars. Yep. So we were all ready to pay our five dollars because it says it's five dollars to park and use the uh day use area but we just saw this sign that again the America the Beautiful Pass gets you in and covers you so save yourself five bucks. This is so pretty. Let's go get steamy. I can feel the warmth already. I'm trying to hold off every step because like you can obviously stick your hand in and feel how it feels but I want to feel it when I first dip in. We picked out our spot and we're going in. Oh no that's so nice. It's so steamy. Oh that's hot. Oh that feels good. It's kind of hot. Dude that feels so nice. That feels really good. It's around 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh this feels good. It takes a second to get used to because it's so hot. It's like a hot hot tub. We're kind of like smooshed. It's not the deepest but oh this is cool. Oh it feels so good especially being cold. I told Katherine we're gonna do shock therapy. We're gonna sit in here for a little bit and then go get in the river down there. I'm okay with this. This feels good. Up there is way hotter. My feet hurt. This is so awesome. Perfect for early morning. I don't think Adam's ever going to leave. I'm not leaving no. This is my hot spring pool now. All right we are 100% all in on the hot spring hype. If you guys aren't careful this might turn into a hot spring dedicated YouTube channel. They might like that. Shirtless Adam all day every day. But yeah we might be looking for more along the way because that was just awesome. That was incredible. We could have stayed there all day long. We got so lucky because we got here right when it opened. We were the only people here until right when we were leaving a guy showed up and I think a couple more people are coming now. So we got so lucky. But we had it for almost an hour. Yeah it was amazing. We wish we could have stayed but we have more things we want to do today. Our last day in the mountains and we're gonna head to Stanley to grab some breakfast. We made it to Stanley Idaho which is the gateway to the Sawtooth mountains. It's a super cute small town with this like log cabin architecture surrounded by mountains and according to the sign when you enter the town there's only 63 residents. And I think they were all at Stanley Baking Company which is where we just grabbed breakfast. That place was popping off. So what I ordered is what's called the Jack's Badge. This is what Jack's Badge looks like. Boom. So it comes with two eggs any way you want. Your choice of meat and then also two pancakes. They had oatmeal pancakes and they had sourdough and I chose to go with the sourdough. They look They're huge. They're way bigger than I thought they were gonna be. As big as your face. So my breakfast turned out a little sad. So I got this thing called the Basque Scramble. What it's supposed to be are like scrambled eggs, beans, chorizo, potatoes, tortilla chips, and bread. I think in tomatoes. So I asked for the eggs on the side which I got here but it has like some of the goodness. The peppers. I don't think it's tomatoes. It's peppers and the beans were mixed in with my eggs on the side. So I cannot eat them because I cannot have eggs. So Adam's gonna enjoy that part. So this is what I got. This is what I have left which is bread. I cannot eat. Some tortilla chips which I'm not really sure what I'm gonna do with them. Some potatoes and some chorizo. I thought I would try and get something on the menu. I normally just like put sides together which is kind of what I ended up getting. I'm sure it'll be delicious. It's just not the grand breakfast I maybe had envisioned. That's dang good. I don't know that I would know that they're sourdough if you didn't tell me but they're just really good pancakes. They're light and fluffy and you know it's hard to go wrong with pancakes to be honest but that's freaking good. So I might have taken a bite or three of the pancakes. I just can't resist pancakes. They're probably my favorite breakfast food and the thing I miss the most about the fact that I can't really eat breakfast foods anymore and these ones are so good. They're just so buttery and soft. That's what hard work and dedication looks like. We have explored the Sawtooth Mountains by foot. Now we're doing it by kayak. We're kayaking on Redfish Lake which is a four and a half mile long lake with the sickest views of the mountains. The prettiest water. We really have no destination in mind. We're just gonna paddle around for a while and just see what we can see. We decided we're gonna try to get around this bend right here because there's a mountain right there that we think we'll be able to see along with all of these beauties. It should be pretty awesome. We still have yet to round the corner. It's taking a while but we are getting a glimpse of the view around the corner and oh my god. Ridiculous. This is 100% the best kayaking view we've ever had in our lives. Probably even one of the best views we've had in our lives. Check this out. The back, the long journey back but this is another one of those things where we could have sat out here all day long. It's just too hard to take your eyes off of. It's gorgeous. Unfortunately it's twenty dollars an hour and I think we're already at an hour and a half so we gotta get back. One positive thing about the trek back though is that there are different mountains in the other direction so the view is totally different. We see it. Hallelujah. We just looked at the map and we realized we thought maybe the lake started behind the lodge but the lake starts at the lodge and we were probably half a mile from the end of the lake so I think by the end of this thing we'll have kayaked eight miles which we've never done before which explains why we're so tired. So we just returned the kayak and we asked them if it was four and a half miles to the end and they said it was five so that means we probably went four and a half each way. I think they were a little impressed we went that long. They only charged us one more hour though. We were out for two and a half. Yeah that was nice of them. I think we deserve a treat now. Before we started kayaking we saw a sign for handcrafted root beer floats so that's what kind of drove us, kept us going on the uh not the hike the kayak. We can't even think that was such a long experience it was totally worth it we will say that was absolutely beautiful. Yeah ever since our dirty soda experience in Salt Lake we're kind of into sodas now so this looks really good they got the root beer out of like a tap is that the right word when it came out? I think they call it buck snort. Buck snort is the brand I guess. I'll feed you. Oh man. Heck yeah. That's so good. I can't even remember the last time I had a root beer float. This is very well served. Soft serve is creamy and then you get the root beer-y. I gotta put the camera down before she eats it all. That is amazing. Get the root beer float if you come here. We made it to our campsite for the night. One of the many things that we have loved about this area and the Sawtooth Mountains in general is all the awesome free campsites we could find here and this one's especially awesome because we got an awesome wooden teepee looking structure at this site. We drove around the loop and we saw this teepee here and we knew we had to pick this one. We're like this is the one. We're not gonna use it at all but it's just it's really cool to look at. Unfortunately though it is our last night here in the Sawtooth Mountains. We have to head out of town tomorrow because we don't have any cell phone service here really at all and that makes it a little hard to work so we're really sad to leave. It's been absolutely incredible three days here. Just mind-blowing scenery everywhere you look. We just love the vibe. It's kind of reminded us a bit of like Wyoming. We were in like the Grand Teton area but I'd argue that I might even like this area better. I think I'm leaning towards this area too. It's just it's just beautiful so hopefully all of our footage has captured how beautiful it is and hopefully you guys will come and check it out for yourself but we're really sad to leave. I don't want to. Adam's gonna have to drag me out of here in the morning but next up we're headed to Boise which is a city that we love and we cannot wait to share with you guys. I really wanted some salsa to dip these in but then I had an idea. Dip it in syrup. It's got that like salty sweet combination going on. That's probably one of the weirder things I've ever done in the vlog but don't knock it till you try it. It's really good. I can see the appeal. I haven't had it yet but I can see how it would work you know salt and salty and sweet but I just have to test it myself. No that's kind of good. It's probably a very rare occurrence that you would ever have tortilla chips without salsa and syrup together but if you ever do now you know you can combine them and make a beautiful salty sweet combination.