While the Big Wood River Valley gets plenty of attention for its world-class fly fishing, world-renown skiing and out-of-this-world culinary and cultural treats, its next door neighbor to the east gets all but ignored.
Maybe that’s why taking the short (or dusty and bumpy) drive over to the Little Wood River Valley feels like you’ve gone to another world.
At least that’s how it felt—before we even cracked into the Keystone Lights (“fewer calories, same crappy taste”)—as we took our first family camping trip of the season to Little Wood Reservoir in mid-May.
Getting There
As the crow flies, the Little Wood Reservoir is just on the other side of Lookout Mountain, which hovers to the east of Bellevue. It’s a short drive, less than 40 miles to the “lake,” which is nestled like a chubby river, 11 miles north of Carey. In warmer, drier months, the dirt road from Muldoon Canyon can get you to just above the reservoir. (At least one rig, driven by a Land Rover and Bellevue-loving couple, has made it over this season.)
There isn’t much between the lake and town, just a few farms and some scattered houses. Its big sky kind of country. Rolling foothills, gushing in spring green, slowly work their way towards the snow-capped Pioneers off in the distance as lush clouds drift on past.
This early in the season, the high desert is vibrantly verdant and as lush as a wool sweater. The sheep love the Little Wood Valley this time of year. Their baaing is pretty much the only sound in the valley, outside of the wind.
What To Do
Completed in 1939, the Little Wood Dam created a 600-acre impoundment aka “lake.” Snow melt that starts in the Pios, as the beloved range is often called, pauses in the Little Wood Reservoir (elevation 5,243’) for a while, and then makes its way to the Pacific Ocean, via the Malad, Snake and eventually Columbia Rivers.
The Little Wood Res. is popular for both fishermen and water skiers. Rainbows and even some cutthroat and brook trout can be caught. Despite the cold early spring temps, our group landed and a few nice ‘bows. Stocky and glittering in silver, with just a hint of green and red, they all bit on jigs.
Water skiers like the lake in the warmer months for its glassy morning conditions. Hunters hit the place hard as a base camp in the autumn.
Spring can be fickle in the Northern Rockies. So any good campers should be always prepared for foul weather—or as we now say in our family, to “Get farkled!”
You’re Farkled
The term “farkle” was actually bred in the motorcycle world. It’s what they call any accessory for a bike that’s both “functional” and adds some “sparkle”—hence the two words’ love child, “farkle.”
The game of Farkle is as old as dice. All you need to play are six dice and a cup to shake them up in. Legendary Games makes a version of Pocket Farkle; a game with unknown origins but countless nicknames such as Cosmic Wimpout, Greed, Hot Dice, 10,000 and Zonk.
It’s a quickly-paced, high scoring game for kids of just about any age, which can be played with as few as two and probably as many as a dozen. The rules are rather simple, keep rolling until you feel like you’ve gotten enough points. But if you don’t get at least one scoring die in each roll, you lose all your points for that round and get a “farkle.”
To help you deal with the frustration of losing points by being greedy and rolling one too many times, the people playing with you will make comments—sometimes at the their top of their lungs—using variations of the word “farkle.”
What’s really amazing about the game is discovering how many ways you can use the term farkle in a sentence, especially if you’ve spent the day drinking Keystone Light (“Bottled beer taste in a can—assuming, of course, you’ve never had a bottled beer before”).
As the seven of us huddled inside the camper, and the wind and rain huffed and puffed at the door, we whiled away the evening playing dice and hollering out sentences that included the word “farkle.”
“I really got farkled on that one,” said Grandpa
“Talk about getting farkled in the pie hole,” giggled Mom
“Farkle me! Farkle You! Farkle Everybody!” cooed Grandma
“You’re really gonna get farkled this time,” warned Grantie
“Farkle this farkle fest of a game!” cheered Dad.
As for spending a weekend exploring the Little Wood Valley and chasing after trout at the reservoir, I’d highly recommend it. It’s a farkling good time!
