Listen, Idaho, you can hear the sounds of tailgates slamming shut and the hiss of float tubes being aired up. You can hear the slow click of reels as line gets strung through rod guides. You can hear the crisp snap of a fly box being closed. Under those tones you can hear muted noises like oars being shuffled into place and strapped into boats, and the distinct crinkling of waders as they come out of a bag totally dry for the first time this year. Soon these sounds will be replaced by the swish of legs in water and the whisps of casts placed far over the water. Opening Day is upon us!
Silver Creek is the place to be for Opening Weekend! Join Picabo Angler on Friday night for the Picabo premiere of Hank Patterson’s “Mystery of the Cuttyrainbrown Trout,” showing in our airplane hangar at 8:30 p.m. Bring a camp chair and your hardiest laugh. On Saturday, the festivities continue with our Opening Day barbecue starting at 11:30 a.m.
If you are fishing Silver Creek this weekend, plan on seeing a few hatches. Callibaetis have been the most prolific as of late. Baetis is always a possibility, especially if we see a lot of cloud cover. And have a few PMD patterns, just in case…
Regardless of the hatches, you can count on Terrestrials carrying the day. Be sure to have plenty of Ants and Beetles in a variety of sizes. Large Chernobyl patterns can be good in adverse weather, and smaller flies like Flying Ants and Crowe Beetles will be effective if the water stays glassed over.
Anglers sticking around for the night fishing will find Mouse patterns effective, and Brown Drakes will be coming into the mix soon enough – probably not this weekend, but probably not far behind, either. Anglers that don’t want to be out late can opt for getting up early and fishing Streamers in the gray morning light.
The South Fork of the Boise will also be fishable on the opener. The river is at driftboat levels and Nymphing with big flies like Girdle Bugs and Salmon Fly Nymphs is your best bet. Smaller nymphs like Copper Johns and Hares Ears are also excellent choices.
Plan on runoff affecting most of our rivers over the weekend, which will make places like Silver Creek busier than normal. Please remember to be kind and share your experiences as best you can with your fellow anglers.
Bustos and Corker would shift $447,000 in proposed cuts
BY JEAN JACQUES BOHL
Cami Bustos. Photo courtesy of Blaine County School District
Blaine County School District Trustees Cami Bustos and Elizabeth Corker plan to introduce an alternative budget for Fiscal Year 2017 that would shift more $445,000 in proposed cuts in the district’s operating budget.
The proposed alternative would restore the district’s Latino and parent liaison positions, the International Baccalaureate program, summer and after-school programs and a subsidy to Mountain Rides Transportation Authority for bus rides for students.
Instead, Bustos and Corker are proposing eliminating the district’s Communications Department, at a cost of $200,000, and reducing $120,000 from administrators’ salaries and benefits and $85,000 from administrator training.
They also plan to transfer the royalties that the district receives from a contract with Silverback, a private educational software company owned by former district Superintendent Jim Lewis, from the Blaine County Education Foundation back to the district’s general fund. Royalties from Silverback, which uses software developed by the school district, amount to about $90,000 per year.
Bustos and Corker unveiled their proposed budget alternative at a town hall meeting organized by Bustos and held at the Community Campus in Hailey on Monday evening.
After hearing the alternative, district Superintendent GwenCarol Holmes was adamant that “we are not eliminating the Communications Department.”
Concerning administrative salaries, district Business Manager Mike Chatterton acknowledged that salaries compared to nine Idaho school districts of similar size are about 40 percent above the average.
In an interview with The Weekly Sun after the meeting, Corker, who also serves as vice chair of the board, explained her reasons for submitting the alternative budget.
“It is the job of the democratically elected school board members to spend the taxpayers’ money wisely,” Corker said. “Everything in the budget should support the students’ needs for success.”
She said further that the Latino and parent liaison positions “support students” and are needed to “help parents access special services and know their rights.”
Corker also defended the International Baccalaureate program.
Elizabeth Corker. Photo courtesy of Blaine County School District
“This is a program that involved parents have told me has significantly increased the quality of their children’s education, teaches critical thinking, global-mindedness, etc.,” Corker said. “It was a top community priority of the last strategic plan. The district has committed significant funds to IB training of teachers; implementation of IB. Now we throw it away?”
Corker also claimed that her research has shown that the district’s teachers earn 61 percent more than the state average, a situation that she attributed to the higher cost of living in Blaine County. However, she said the some district administrator salaries range from 72 percent to 151 percent above the state average for comparable positions and argued that the differential should be scaled back to match the 61 percent higher wages of district teachers.
The district’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2017, which starts on July 1, is $88.8 million, with $53.6 million going to the general fund for operating expenses.
To change a trend in spending more money than it brings in each year, a situation that is gradually deteriorating the district’s financial reserves, the school board intends to cut about $1.3 million from its operating budget for FY2017 compared to FY2016.
The new budget is scheduled to be considered for approval by the five-member school board at its next regular meeting on June 14.
Soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division train at Mount Rainier National Park during World War II. Photo courtesy of National Park Service
10th Mountain Division fought in northern Italy
BY MARIA PREKEGES
This monument, placed by the 10th Mountain Division Foundation at Baldy Circle in Sun Valley Village, commemorates the Sun Valley area men who served as ski troops in World War II. Weekly Sun photo by Brennan Rego
Memorial Day is mainly intended to honor U.S. soldiers who died in battle. However, common usage has extended to commemoration of all U.S. armed services veterans, whether they died in battle or later of wounds, by accident or from natural causes.
Forty-five Sun Valley area men are remembered for their service as ski troops in the 10th Mountain Division in World War II. The division served in northern Italy, where it was subjected to 110 combat days. Before the war ended, about 1,000 of the division’s soldiers, out of some 30,000 who served in the unit during WWII, were killed in combat.
The Sun Valley soldiers are commemorated with a monument that sits today in Baldy Circle in Sun Valley Village. Placed by the 10th Mountain Division Foundation, the monument is a large boulder with plaques providing the names of the 45 men and a brief description of their service.
Some of the men were drafted into the Army, but were given a nonbinding choice as to where they would like serve. With their experience as skiers, the men were naturally selected to the newly forming Mountain Division, which was looking for skiers, foresters, loggers and others with outdoor experience who, according to the division foundation, “could take care of themselves out of doors in all four seasons.”
The division’s troops received special training for fighting in mountain and Arctic conditions. In Italy, in addition to mountain fighting, the soldiers served as “light infantry,” which were specialized units that typically served in armed reconnaissance or as advance troops in major operations. As such, they often experienced heavy combat.
One of the Sun Valley men who served in the division was Nelson Bennett, who died earlier this year at the age of 101 and is also known as a founder of the Sun Valley Ski Patrol.
Information on Bennett, who was interviewed in 1986 by John Huckins, is available at The Community Library in Ketchum. Information there records that Bennett was originally from New Hampshire and learned to ski as a child on barrel staves and homemade bindings. He loved skiing and eventually moved to Sun Valley and worked on Bald Mountain, where he was appointed to head the ski patrol in 1941. He was drafted after the United States entered World War II.
The 10th Mountain Division with supporting tank units moves forward during the “big push” at Bologna, Italy, on April 14, 1945. Photo courtesy of Army Center for Military History
“In 1941 I signed up for the draft, and back then you could indicate the service that you had a preference to be in, but with no promises,” Bennett said in the interview with John Huckins. “So I put down the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment that was formed at Fort Lewis, Washington, and that was the nucleus of the 10th Mountain Division.”
Bennett said he began training with the division in 1942 after reporting to an induction center in Utah along with Brute Hurley, another Sun Valley man who served in the division.
Also serving in the division was Barney Bell, who was interviewed in 1987 by Shirley Huckins. Information on Bell is also available at The Community Library. Bell reported that he learned to ski in the Wood River Valley in the late 1920s.
“We would go out Quigley,” Bell said in the interview, “and we would climb and climb and climb. And you didn’t have any ski boots or bindings or nothing, so Dad would cut an inner-tube tubing and fix it around my heel and up over my toe. And we’d get up there, and we’d ride a long pole just straight down. You couldn’t turn on those kind of skis, so we’d be up on those mountains, just come straight down.”
Bell said when he underwent training at Fort Collins, Colo., with an elevation over 5,000 feet, he had an advantage over trainees who hadn’t lived at a high elevation.
“Those poor devils had to lay around for six weeks to two months,” Bell said. “They just couldn’t hack it.”
Bell said that, after training, the Army provided the ski troops with “big, heavy wood, white wood skis.” For clothing, “we had special, a lot of special stuff. They called them mountain warfare clothes, warfare pants, and a big light (white) jacket.”
Shoulder patch of the 10th Mountain Division.
The soldiers were also given down sleeping bags that Bell said we’re taken away from them when they went to Italy because “they didn’t want us to get trapped in the sleeping bag.” They were given lighter sleeping bags, instead.
“That’s why we always looked for a big, heavy pine tree and we’d dig underneath there, you know, to get that shelter,” he said.
Bennett and Bell both attest that living in the Sun Valley area helped with their training and service in the division.
The 10th Mountain Division was deactivated after the war but was reactivated in 1985 and today is based at Fort Drum, N.Y. According to the 10th Mountain Division Foundation, the division has had the most deployments of all U.S. Army divisions since its reactivation.
Elements of the 10th Mountain Division have served in Operation Desert Storm, in Hurricane Andrew disaster relief, in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, the Sinai Peninsula and at some 20 deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
During World War II, the division’s soldiers had a battle motto of “sempre avanti,” which is Italian for “always forward.”
Harley Robert Park is shown here shortly after his arrest on a first-degree murder charge in Camas County on Sept. 3, 2003. Photo courtesy Gooding County Sheriff’s Office
Judge vacates manslaughter trial for Harley Park
BY TERRY SMITH
Judge Robert J. Elgee on Tuesday found that Harley Robert Park, charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death 13 years ago of a prominent Camas County businessman, is “incompetent” to stand trial.
Elgee further vacated a trial that was scheduled to start on June 6 in Blaine County 5th District Court. He ordered instead that Park be transported to a facility to be determined by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, that a new mental evaluation be conducted and that the court and defense and prosecution counsel review Park’s mental capacity in 90 days.
Elgee’s ruling follows an earlier reduction of a first-degree murder charge for Park to involuntary manslaughter. That decision was made by the Idaho Attorney General’s Office and was based upon information from an expert witness who wasexpected to testify at trial that Harley Robert Park was not of sound mental condition when he killed a man in Camas County in 2003.
The decision to amend the charge against Park was formalized on May 16 in Blaine County 5th District Court, which now has jurisdiction over the case. Deputy attorneys with the AG’s Office, which has been assigned as special prosecutor, acknowledged then that the charge was reduced because of “expert reports.”
Specifically, Hailey attorney Douglas Nelson, assigned as public defender for Park, informed the court and prosecution in an Oct. 13, 2015 memorandum that he would call as a trial witness Dr. Richard Worst, a Twin Falls psychiatrist who interviewed Park shortly after Park allegedly beat to death a prominent Fairfield businessman.
Nelson wrote in the memorandum that he intended to “raise mental illness as a defense” and that Worst would testify that Park “suffered from mental illness such that he could not form the sufficient mental state required to be convicted of first-degree murder.”
Park, now 38, is charged in the death of 61-year-old Lynn Stevenson on Sept. 3, 2003 at a golf course Stevenson owned near Soldier Mountain Ski Resort north of Fairfield.
According to a police report filed shortly after the death by Camas County Sheriff Dave Sanders, Park, who was staying and working at the golf course, killed Stevenson because Stevenson was “the devil.”
Park was being held without bond until Tuesday at the Elmore County Jail in Mountain Home. He has spent the majority of the past 13 years court committed to the State Hospital South mental institution in Blackfoot.
Brooke Sundholm, a senior at Wood River High School, sings with Colla Voce, the school’s all-female singing group, and derives fulfillment from helping others.
“When I graduate from college I want to be a traveling nurse and go to Third World countries to help,” Sundholm said. “Maybe be part of Mercy Corps, which is an organization that helps create jobs and careers for 13-year-old girls so that they have an option to being married at that age. It’s such a gratifying feeling to help others in need.
“Here in Sun Valley, people are not so much in need, so the opportunities to help are not as great, but I love volunteering at the soup kitchen at the Catholic Church.
“I’ve also been very involved with the Matsiko Child Choir, which is a traveling orphanage choir,” Sundholm said. “I assist them with housing and work at their concerts, selling jewelry. I was in fifth grade when they first came here and we housed them. While they lived with us, we taught them English and learned a lot about them.”
The choir consists of children who come primarily from India, Peru and Africa.
“What inspired me the most were the stories of their childhoods,” Sundholm said. “The first year we housed them, a girl from Uganda told us how children were taken from the villages to become soldiers. The level of everyday fear is awful.”
At WRHS, Sundholm has a 3.4 grade point average. Her main interest is in biology, which led her to want to become a nurse.
“I’m going to Baylor University next year, which has a great nursing program, so I thought I’d take advantage of it,” she said.“You get to interact more with people than you do as a doctor, which is more fun and you see a lot of cool things. It makes me feel fantastic to help because you get to make an impact on someone else’s life.”
Sundholm also has a passion for singing, which finds an outlet as a member of Colla Voce. She has been singing with the group for three years. There are 12 women in the group this year and the singers had to audition to be selected.
“I was in musicals as a kid and then in sixth grade I joined the choir at the middle school,” Sundholm said. “My first show was ‘Annie’ at St. Thomas Playhouse.
“My mom wanted me to do it and be involved in something after school and I made a lot of friends. I don’t remember too much except being on a bunk bed and that was my spot for the whole play. It was so much fun, and then I did a lot at the nexStage Theatre. I was told I was good, so I pursued it.
“I tried out for Colla Voce my freshman year and didn’t make it.” Sundholm said. “When I did get in the next year, I had just finished driver’s education and got my permit, so it was the best day ever. I just jumped up and down. I was really proud of myself.”
Greenberg wins Democratic ticket in commissioners’ race
BY TERRY SMITH
Incumbent Blaine County Commissioner Jacob Greenberg won the Democratic ticket for reelection in the May 17 primary vote. Photo courtesy of Blaine County
Ketchum officials aren’t ready to call it quits on seeking voter approval to build a new city hall, but acknowledged at a city council meeting Monday that more public input and involvement will be needed if the proposal is to succeed.
They may ask Ketchum voters again as early as November to approve a $23.1 million 30-year general obligation bond to replace the aging structure on East Avenue that currently houses city hall.
A two-thirds majority was needed for approval, but the measure put to the voters on May 17 didn’t come anywhere near that. Instead, the measure received only 32.5 percent approval and was defeated by a sound margin of 181 to 556.
Prior to a decision as to whether the measure should be put to voters again, city council intends to gather more public input, through surveys and town hall meetings, and to increase public involvement, possibly by forming a citizens’
committee.
In other election results, officials of the cities of Hailey and Sun Valley are pleased with the results of funding measures they put before voters.
Hailey’s electorate voted 568 to 402 to approve a two-year special levy of $800,000 for the city’s infrastructure. Specifically, the city intends to use the funding to repair, design and construct sidewalks, bike paths, trails and other bike-pedestrian systems. The measure needed a simple majority for approval but received a 58.5 percent positive vote.
Sun Valley voters approved by a vote of 154 to 71 to extend the city’s local option taxes for another 10 years. A 60 percent majority was needed for approval but the measure instead received a positive vote of68.4 percent.
Also in the May 17 primary election, Blaine County’s only contested race for public office was won on the Democratic ticket by incumbent Commissioner Jacob Greenberg who received 1,278 votes out of 2,255 cast for a winning percentage of 56.6. Challengers Kaz Thea received 852 votes and Gary Whitworth Brower 125 votes.
Greenberg is unopposed for the November general election.
The Little Wood River Library of Carey has chosen Karen Young for this year’s Heritage Court. Young is well known in the community of Carey, having been involved with the Blaine County School District, various service organizations and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
“It’s a great honor,” Young said of her selection to the court. “But you feel there are more worthy people. I guess they wanted someone who really uses the library and they felt that I would meet the qualifications. I’ve lived in Blaine County for over 30 years and I’m over 70 years of age and I like to participate in the community.”
Young said that when she first came to Carey in 1966, “I thought I had come to the end of the world. Now I love it. We built our house in 1970 and have lived there ever since.
“I love the people in Carey because they are so kind and caring. With about 500 people, it’s a really nice community to be in and I like being close to Craters of the Moon and the Little Wood Reservoir.
“It’s so pretty and when I look out our kitchen window I can see all the mountains,” she said. “It’s also a great place to raise kids. It may not have all the activity of Hailey, but all my children went to college and they all had a great education in Carey.”
Young was born in Huntington Park, Calif., one of five children. In 1955 she married Ross Young and worked for Thiokol while her husband earned a master’s degree from Utah State University. The couple moved to Carey two months before their fifth child was born.
For several years Karen Young was a scout leader. She taught knitting for 4-H and was involved in activities associated with the Blaine County Fair and various girls’ projects.
For 28 years she worked for the school district, first in the Carey School lunchroom and later as a bus driver. As a driver, she chauffeured girls’ athletic teams. She also enjoyed driving sixth-graders on trips to Yellowstone National Park.
Young started driving for the school district in 1974 and served as scorekeeper at games where she drove the teams.
“I did it for both basketball and volleyball as well as driving to places like Boise, Shoshone, Richfield and Gooding,” Young said.
“They made me the scorekeeper so I wouldn’t be such a wild fan,” she said with a laugh. “When my kids were playing, I would get pretty excited. But when you sit at the scorer’s table, you really have to behave.”
Karen and Ross Young are active members of the Carey LDS church, and have twice, since retiring, served on missions, once in Nauvoo, Ill., and five years later in Storm Lake, Iowa. This year the couple will celebrate their 61st wedding anniversary.
HERITAGE COURT
This is the second of a four-part series about the four women selected this year for the Blaine County Historical Museum Heritage Court. Now in its 13th year, the Heritage Court was founded to honor women for their contributions to the history and heritage of Blaine County. A coronation ceremony for this year’s honorees is set for 3 p.m. Sunday, June 12, at the Liberty Theatre in Hailey.
A World War II P-51 Mustang, named the Boise Bee, is one of several vintage aircraft that will do a flyover of the Hailey Memorial Day ceremony on May 30. Photo courtesy of Warhawk Air Museum in Nampa
Holiday originally known as ‘Decoration Day’
BY JEAN JACQUES BOHL
Union General John A. Logan is known as one of the founders of the commemoration known today as Memorial Day. Public domain photo, accessed via Wikimedia Commons
First known as Decoration Day, the holiday celebrated today as Memorial Day has its origins in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War and has evolved over the past 150 years to become a day to remember U.S. service men and women, particularly those who gave their lives in the service of their country.
The first recorded observance of a Memorial Day-type celebration occurred in Charleston, S.C., on May 1, 1865, when newly freed black residents of Charleston landscaped and built an enclosure around a mass grave of Union soldiers who had died in captivity in a nearby Confederate prison camp.
The following year, on April 25, in Columbus, Miss., local women decorated the graves of Confederate and Union soldiers.
The next known commemoration of war dead occurred on May 5, 1868 when Civil War Union General John A. Logan, then commander of The Grand Army of the Republic, a Northern veterans association, issued a proclamation for a nationwide and annual observance of Decoration Day as a day to remember fallen Union soldiers.
With a growing recognition of Decoration Day, it became an observance in various areas where people would put flowers on the graves of Union soldiers. The day of May 30 was chosen for the observance.
By 1890, every Union state had made Decoration Day a state holiday. Southern states also held observances for their dead soldiers.
A four-day “Blue and Gray” event in 1913 in Gettysburg, Pa., involving both former Union and Confederate veterans, marked the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg July 1-3 in 1863 and became recognized as a national reconciliation of the Civil War.
The name Memorial Day instead of Decoration Day became more in use following World War I and especially so after World War II.
While Veterans Day salutes the service of all veterans, living and dead, who have served in the U.S. armed forces, Memorial Day was originally intended to remember soldiers who paid the ultimate price while serving. More than 1.1 million U.S. servicemen and women have died in battle since 1776.
It took a 1967 federal law to make the name Memorial Day official. In 1968 the U.S. Congress approved the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, moving four holidays, including Memorial Day, to a specified Monday in order to create three-day weekends. The law took effect in 1971. After some confusion and bickering, all 50 states adopted the federal holiday policy.
Since then, the Veterans of Foreign Wars has advocated for a return to the traditional observance of May 30. The VFW stated in a 2002 Memorial Day address that “changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt this has contributed a lot to the general public’s nonchalant observance of Memorial Day.”
Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, a World War II veteran, supported the VFW point of view and in 1987 introduced a measure in Congress to return Memorial Day to May 30. He continued to push for changing the observance until his death in 2002.
Rush skeletonweed is a perennial whose branched stems may be 4 feet tall and appear leafless. The lower 4 to 6 inches of the stems are covered with coarse brown hairs. The dandelion-like rosettes, that form in the fall, die as the plant ages. When the plant is cut or broken, it oozes a milky white latex sap.
Rush skeletonweed was first reported in the U.S., near Spokane, Wash., in 1938. It was found in Idaho and Oregon during the 1960s.
This weed thrives in well-drained, sandy textured or rocky soils, along roadsides, in rangelands, pastures and grain fields.
Small yellow flowers begin in early summer and continue until frost in the fall. Seeds mature nine to 15 days after the flowers open. Each seed has a parachute of fine hairs, which allow it to travel long distances by wind. Rush skeletonweed spreads primarily by seed, but rosettes can form from lateral roots at varying distances from the parent plant.
Skeletonweed is difficult to control. It will be necessary to use a number of different control methods.
Warnings about noxious weeds may seem trivial until you look at their damages based on numbers: $300 million annually in losses to our economy; $20 million to fight noxious weeds on the ground; and more than 8 million acres of land and water infested by noxious weeds. (Resource: www.idahoweedawareness.org).
Noxious weeds are a serious matter and you can help us fight them. The Blaine County Noxious Weed Department, along with the Blaine County Cooperative Weed Management Area (CWMA), would like to assist you in identifying the 67 noxious weeds in the state of Idaho.
The Blaine County Noxious Weed Department is a great resource for property owners (remember, property owners are obligated by law to control all noxious weeds on their property) and can assist with weed identification, management plans, tools, and general information. For more information, call (208) 788-5543 or visit www.blainecounty.org.
Andrea Walton is an administrative specialist with Blaine County.
Rich Broadcasting’s team poses in Hailey at the KECH studio above the Hailey Hotel. Photo courtesy of Hailey Chamber of Commerce
BY JEFF BACON
When Rich Broadcasting acquired three radio stations in the Wood River Valley, they knew they had added a rich history of radio to their group of stations located in Idaho and Jackson Hole, Wyo.
“We were really excited to be a part of the radio story in the Wood River Valley,” said Delyn Hendricks, market manager for Rich Broadcasting, headquartered in Idaho Falls. “KECH and KSKI have been Valley staples for so many years and the addition of STAR 107 has given us a well-rounded offering for the musical tastes in the Valley.
“I like that we’re so much a part of the interconnected Valley,” notes continuity director Charissa Lang. “There is so much information about all that happens every day in our community and we get to be the source that gets that information out to our listeners.”
And it’s a big job. In addition to managing three separate music formats, the Rich Broadcasting team also manages social media channels for each station, produces ads for each and has local daily features, like KSKI’s Free Music Friday or Daily Trivia on KECH.
For KECH morning guy Doug Donoho, the day starts early.
“We normally get into the stations about 5 a.m. to begin prepping the show for the day,” Doug notes. “With so much happening, once the 6 a.m. hour starts it’s important to know what your show highlights are going to be before we start.”
“It’s a good thing that Doug and I work so well together,” Jamie adds. “It’s not just that we spend a lot of time across the hall from each other; we start every weekday at a time of day that the body thinks it should be asleep. Don’t believe it – it’s not easy to get up at 4:30 every morning. Your body never does get used to it.”
Any big changes coming for the Rich Broadcasting team in the near future?
“We’re excited about the new signs that are going on the outside of the building,” adds Charissa. “These stations have been above the Hailey Hotel for years and unless you’ve won a prize or maybe came in to record an ad or give an interview, you’d never know we’re here. The stations’ logos on the building will really look great.”
On Thursday, May 19, Rich Broadcasting will be hosting this month’s Chamber Business After Hours in association with The Weekly Sun. The event, to be held at the Hailey Hotel at Croy and Main Street in Hailey, is being promoted as a media party and will begin at 5 p.m. Local restaurants will be serving small bites and the Hailey Hotel will be sampling wines and beers. Chamber members are encouraged to attend and bring a guest to introduce them to this great monthly networking opportunity.
Jeff Bacon is the Hailey Chamber of Commerce’s membership director. For more information, visit haileyidaho.com or call the Chamber at 208.788.3484.
Listen, Idaho, you can hear the sounds of tailgates slamming shut and the hiss of float tubes being aired up. You can hear the slow click of reels as line gets strung through rod guides. You can hear the crisp snap of a fly box being closed. Under those tones you can hear muted noises like oars being shuffled into place and strapped into boats, and the distinct crinkling of waders as they come out of a bag totally dry for the first time this year. Soon these sounds will be replaced by the swish of legs in water and the whisps of casts placed far over the water. Opening Day is upon us!
Rush skeletonweed is a perennial whose branched stems may be 4 feet tall and appear leafless. The lower 4 to 6 inches of the stems are covered with coarse brown hairs. The dandelion-like rosettes, that form in the fall, die as the plant ages. When the plant is cut or broken, it oozes a milky white latex sap.
