A mother/daughter adventure in beautiful Burgdorf, Idaho

Next time you find yourself near McCall, Idaho, skip though town and head north on Warren Wagon Road. You’ll pass the Pueblo Lindo Mexican restaurant (worth a stop if you’re hungry), skirt Payette Lake and Upper Payette Lake, and 28 very slow miles later, you’ll find yourself in Burgdorf – the little town that time forgot.

I was enchanted with Burgdorf the moment I saw the sign – Burgdorf – spelled out in greying aspen trunks and branches, nailed carefully to the side of a weather-beaten barn. This looks like my kind of place, I thought.

The ambiance of Burgdorf, from the rusted red pickup abandoned in the field to the dilapidated dance hall with the drooping front porch, to the smattering of old cabins and outhouses, felt so authentic. Even the weary hot springs pool looked inviting.

There are 16 no-frills cabins in Burgdorf, and most are tiny. All have wood burning stoves and outhouses. None have running water or kitchens.

We stayed in a cabin called DeRail. It had a double bed, a wood burning stove, a wooden table and chairs and a counter. The front porch, up a few creaky steps, had two chairs and a wobbly table. We had a private outhouse out back, a few steps up the hill. It was perfect.

The hot springs pool was rough around the edges like the rest of the place, which gave it character. The best thing it had going for it was that it was open all night long to overnight guests. A midnight soak was definitely in order.

With its rustic appeal, Burgdorf was charming, and the surrounding area was fascinating, too. In our typical style, we packed as much as we could into our two-day stay.

We hiked from our cozy cabin to the Crystal Mountain trailhead, then climbed the quartz-topped mountain which is said to have the largest deposit of quartz crystals in the state. I’m not sure if that’s actually true, however, we had a great hike and left with some beautiful chunks of quartz.

We also hiked to Loon Lake, a 10-mile adventure along the Secesh River. We were hoping to make it to the crash site of the “Dragon Bomber,” a B-23 that went down in the hills above Loon Lake on January 29, 1943 with eight men aboard, but we ended up turning back at the lake. No worries. We’re glad to have an excuse to return. Side note: All the men survived. Read more.

We made it to nearby Warren, too, the “secret” town we’d heard about located a dozen or so miles up the dirt road past Burgdorf. Folks from McCall who want to get away from the crowds go to Warren, we were told. There were no crowds there, just an old graveyard up on the hill and a restaurant called the Baum Shelter, where we bought a few orders of garlic fries and took them back to the staff at Burgdorf.

To cool off after our dusty adventure, we grabbed our books and returned to the Secesh River, where we plopped down on rocks and splashed our feet in the icy water.

While we had a lot of fun in Burgdorf, my favorite memory is of our middle-of-the-night soak. We set the alarm for 1:30 AM and vowed that when it buzzed, we would force ourselves to get out of bed and walk down to the pool. The alarm sounded and with little debate, we were up, out the door, and into the silent night. Well, almost silent night. As we made our way down the hill, we passed a guest walking up the hill back to his cabin. It was creepy running into someone in the quiet darkness. It was also creepy sitting in the pool and stargazing. It was so eerily quiet, in fact, that we didn’t last too long out there in the darkness!

We squeezed a lot of good times into our short stay in Burgdorf, and we also made some great memories. Who knew that in the tiny town of Burgdorf, in the middle of Nowhere, Idaho, we could have so much fun.