Day trip on the Owyhee Scenic Byway

The country south of Boise kind of fascinates me and I read about the Owyhee scenic byway so we thought we would drive down and take a look at it. We didn't plan to make the entire 120 mile loop but it was a really nice fall day. We headed south on Hwy 95 to Jordan Valley, OR and turned east off the highway onto the scenic byway road. About 25 miles in we came across an active one room school with a couple of houses around which constitutes the town of Pleasant Valley. We crossed back into Idaho on Juniper Mountain road and came to a deep gorge cut by the North Fork of the Owyhee River. It's a pretty steep drop down into the gorge and there is a primitive BLM campground along the river where the road crosses. It was a pretty fall scene.

We had a picnic and hiked a little ways up and down the river. It was a nice day so we decided to keep going. We had to wait for a bunch of cattle trucks coming down the other side. They were bringing the cattle down to their winter range and the yearlings were headed for feedlots. Up on top of the other side we came to these 2-4 mile wide swales with scattered junipers and maybe a little seep of water running at the bottom. Now the first five were kind of interesting but the next 20 plus got boring. We did the entire 120 mile loop coming in south of Grand View and then 50 more miles home.