Bear Lake Winter Weekend Getaway

Bear Lake is a rather large freshwater lake straddling the border of Utah and Idaho. It is renowned for it’s striking turquoise color. Unfortunately, this time of year, not so much. I imagine it is a great summer trip, but probably a lot more crowded than now. As I was preparing for this trip, every interesting sounding thing I wanted to see, was just not possible until late spring. That was a little disappointing however, this trip was more about hanging out with some friends for a birthday than it was for exploring. We did get a little bit of exploring in through.

Day 1: The drive up.

Dry Lake in Dry Valley. Just after Sardine Peak. (Drive By Photography (DBP)). Not so dry this time of year.

Fun Fact. What is commonly referred to as Sardine Canyon is 3 canyons. It starts in Brigham City going up Box Elder Canyon, swings around into Dry Canyon Across Dry Valley and then down Wellsville Canyon into Cache Valley. Sardine Canyon is no longer traversable by car from what I can tell.

Scary little scarecrow.. thing (DBP).

After driving through Cache Valley and Logan you continue up HW 89 up Logan Canyon.

Logan Cave (DBP). We’ll come back to this. I had planned on stopping here but it kind of snuck up on me. Oh well, we’ll stop on the way back.

The place that I was really wanting to stop and take a look was Ricks Spring. More on that here.

The hills and weird red and orange plants along the river (DBP).

Mountain side (DBP).

A nice valley just below the summit (DBP). I’m not 100% sure, but I think this might be North Sink.

Not far beyond the summit is a rest area with a pretty good view point of Bear Lake. Even mostly frozen on a drab day its is pretty spectacular.It;s a shame that hill is in the way, I wonder if there is a trail down to the top of it.

Some great views of it with the rapid decent into the Bear Lake Valley.

From what I have read, there are a total of four lighthouses in Utah. Two of which are considered actual lighthouses (meaning they lie on a traversable body of water and provide assistance with navigation). Those two and one ‘faux’ lighthouse are all up here at Bear Lake. The last faux lighthouse is in Cedar City and we saw that one a few months ago.

Our hotel was right near this one so I got a couple good shots. I did find the other actual lighthouse, but not the faux one.

After arriving and settling in we decided to hop across the border and pick up some supplies.

The Lake (DBP).

The other lighthouse (DBP). The article I read about them must be outdated because it said it was accessible, However we ran into a series of private driveways with no access to the lighthouse. Or maybe I didn’t find it and this is a new, private one.

Well that turned out blurry (DBP).

But, we made it across the border to our favorite stop Gladys’s Place in Fish Haven ID. It is a tiny bait shop turned convenience/lottery/liquor store. Or the one stop get what you can’t get in Utah place just across the border.

While waiting for Jen to purchase her Powerball ticket we found this fun sign next door. It’s a shame it was such a problem they had to post something, but at least they were fun about it.

The sun setting behind the mountains on the way back (DBP).

After returning to our home state we decided to grab some grub.

We found Bear Lake Pizza ‘Home of The Old Ephraim 28” Pizza’ And man oh man, that was some gooooood pizza! Their sizes were Baby Bear, Mama Bear, Papa Bear, and Old Ephraim which was huge!!! We ended up getting two Papa Bears because we wanted variety, and it was more than enough to feed our group of 7. More on Old Ephraim later.

Day Two: The Lake and Montpelier.

Like I said this trip was more about hanging out with old friends than exploring. After having a great night of catching up and having fun we woke up not so bright eyed and bushy tailed to a coffee maker that did not work. Luckily the hotel found us a replacement. Landis and I joked that we have a curse on hotel coffee pots. This was the 4th one on our many trips that has failed on us.

Elise and I decided to walk down to the lake.

The lighthouse by our room again.

I love the clouds reflected off of the lake.

Definitely a lot less frozen that it was 9 years ago. 9 years ago we walked out onto the ice, this year there is no way I am getting on it!

But of course we saw some dumb kids out playing on it. I was worried we were going to have to help pull someone out, luckily there was not an incident.

I did get to see the gorgeous color of the lake! Spectacular. There wasn’t even a glimpse of it 9 years ago, just thick thick ice.

Quick panoramic.

Ice chunks near where the teens were climbing on the ice.

Even a white frozen lake is pretty. With some ice chunks.

Pretty turquoise with some clouds, some floating ice chunks, and their shadows.

The lighthouse again.

The marina is mostly thawed and looking pretty.

After that we decided to drive up to Montpelier.

Not so frozen lake (DBP).

Well our beautiful day is going away pretty quickly (DBP).

The Price Tabernacle is really a nice building (DBP)!

We stopped at Kings and I found a great group of local sodas we don’t get back home.

Us in front of the Old Ephraim statue. Apparently Old Ephraim was a giant 10 foot tall grizzly bear that terrorized the area from 1911 to 1923. Which created a local lore, it’s crazy how many references and monuments there are about him. I really love it! He was eventually killed and his skull was sent to the Smithsonian, and then it has been returned to the Utah State University Library in Logan. I found that there is a grave marker, that is as tall as the bear was, in Logan Canyon somewhere. I thought about finding it this trip, but it is on a dirt road, so it will have to wait until another time.

Just the statue.

More info about the bear.

Statue is accurate, 3 toes on this foot.

Montpelier Idaho.

We took 2 cars up, one group decided to go to Taco Time for lunch, which sounded alright, but our car agreed to check out the local small restaurants. We found Twisted Subs. They had some great subs, and some really darn good pretzels!

We were hoping to check out the bird sanctuary on the way back, but the weather did not seem to be cooperating. So we decided to just head back to the room.

Really neat old building (DBP). Looks like it may have been a church. If I remember correctly this was near Ovid.

After returning to the room the sun decided to come out for a minute, and gave us a nice partial rainbow over the lighthouse.

Well after this we decided it was just time to hang out and play games and chat so nothing more for the day.

Day 3. Check out and the drive back home.

While waking up for the day I noticed there were both iterations of the bright red and orange plants we saw growing by the Logan River on the way up. Still trying to figure out what these are.

And a tree across the way with similar colors.

Heading back up towards Logan canyon offers another great view of the lake (DBP).

Back at the view point.

Lovely poem on this sign post.

It reads:

Above Bear Lake by May Swenson

Sky and lake the same blue
and blue languid mountain between them.
Cloud fluffs make the scene flow.
Green white poles of aspen snake up,
graven with welts and calluses where branches
dried and broke. Other scabs are Lover-made;
initials dug within linked hearts and, higher,
some jackknifed peace signs.
A breeze, and the filtered light makes shine
a million bristling quills of spruce and fir
downslope, where slashes of sky ski and lake
hang blue – windows of intense stain.. We take
the rim trail, crushing bloom of sage,
sniffing resinous wind, our boots in the wild,
small, everycolored Rocky Mountain flowers.
Suddenly, a steep drop-off: below we see the whole,
the whale of it – deep, enormous blue -
that widens, while the sky slants back to pale
behind the watercolored mountain.
Western Tanager – we call him “Fireface” -
darts ahead, we climb to our camp
as the sun slips lower. Clipped to the top
of the tallest fir, Olive-sided Flycatcher,
over and over, fierce-whistles, “Whip!
Whip three bears! Whip, whip three bears!”

Quite lovely. I am also fond on Tanagers they are pretty birds with a pretty call.

Last parting shot.

There isn’t a sign at the summit, other than switching counties (DBP). Considering the weather I was a little worried about returning via Logan Canyon, but figured if we made it to the Bear Lake Summit without any issues, we would be fine. Luckily I was right. The road was a little wet but other than that we had no issues.

One of the cuts into the landscape to accommodate the road (DBP).

Looking down canyon (DBP). Logan Canyon reminds me a lot of Glenwood Canyon in Colorado. Tight, curvy, lots of rock formations, but Glenwood has a major highway running through it.

One of the higher points above Logan River (DBP).

Cool rock formations (DBP).

Not long after I found the waterfall coming out of Logan Cave and announced it was time to stop. Landis was frustrated with the lack of notice, but there were no signs. I just knew there was a waterfall. It was a great short adventure and you can see more of it here.

Tree Tunnel (DBP).

I thought about maybe hiking up to the Wind Caves,since I just spent 2 nights acclimating to the elevation but we had to get home.

Mountain Road (DBP).

Hitting Logan and the “Salt and Pepper Shakers” Tabernacle (DBP)

Downtown Logan (DBP). The Bluebird offers an amazing lunch! I wish we had stopped in this trip.

Blast from the past (DBP).

Great clouds in Dry Canyon (DBP).

Dry Lake (DBP).

Abandoned gas station (DBP).

Mantua Reservoir (DBP).

Well that was a great weekend getaway. I definitely need to return in the warmer months sometime. It really isn’t that far, at 2 hours we’ve gone further for day trips so I think I will try to make it a point to come back sometime this year. Maybe even check out Minnetonka Caves. All and all a good adventure.