a day for hemmingway.

     A few weekends ago, Jason told me he really wanted to visit the grave of one of his favorite authors: Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway’s grave just happens to be in the town of Ketchum, Idaho. I think Jason would have been really disappointed if we had left Idaho without visiting, so we hopped in the car and made the 3-hour drive. 
     When we were in the actual cemetery, we had fun looking for Hemingway’s headstone. We read on a website that it was between two trees, but that’s all we really knew. Luckily, the cemetery wasn’t very big and there weren’t too many trees. Although we were the only people visiting the site that day, you could tell by the amount of pennies placed on the gravestone that many people visit. We wondered what the pennies represented, so I looked it up. It can mean many different things; the most common traditions or superstitions are for good luck or to show that someone had visited. It is also an old tradition that people would be buried with coins to pay the toll in the underworld to cross the River Styx. I’m not sure what exactly the coins represented, but from their appearance you can tell that Hemingway is still sought out and loved.

Ernest Hemingway's grave

     After listening to Jason tell me a little bit about Hemingway’s life, he sat by one of the trees and began to read a short story written by Hemingway: A Clean and Well-Lighted Place. When he was finished, we took one last look at the place that marked the life of Ernest Hemingway and said our goodbyes. 
     Ketchum is a beautiful ski town that sits beneath Bald Mountain and many of the people that visit aren’t from Idaho or even the United States. It was enjoyable to sit down on the patio of an Italian restaurant, Rico’s, we had never heard of and listen to the conversations of those around us. Before leaving Ketchum, we stopped at the Cold Springs Bridge because Jason, of course, had to take a closer look. This type of bridge is called a Pegram bridge. They were used for the rail system and there are only seven Pegram bridges left in the United States, six of which are in Idaho. We enjoyed the peacefulness of the river flowing under us, the butterflies all around us, and the bikers passing by.

Rico's

Cold Springs Bridge

     About an hour into our drive home, we stopped by Craters of the Moon. This is a well-known place in Idaho and is the largest mostly Holocene-aged basaltic lava field in the lower United States. We didn’t stay long, but we did look across the fields of rocks and dust. Jason said he felt like we were in some sort of post-apocalyptic movie.

Craters of the Moon