My Memorial Day With Ernest Hemingway North Of Twin Falls ID
Like many of you, my family and I braved the Idaho roadways over Memorial Day weekend, and drove 80 miles north to the city of Ketchum for a couple of days. I actually stood over the gravesite of one of the most famous writers the world has ever known on Memorial Day.
A last minute change of plans heading into Memorial Day weekend altered what was initially a camping trip to Bear Lake, and instead we wound up leaving for Ketchum just before 7 P.M. on Saturday. We checked into a hotel at the base of Bald Mountain, and spent the next two days living among those in Sun Valley.
Apart from the amazing weather that included lots of sunshine and virtually no wind, the trip also included somewhat of a history lesson regarding one-time local celebrity and famous literary giant, Ernest Hemingway. I knew he was buried in Ketchum, so on our last day in town, which happened to be Monday (Memorial Day), we decided to dedicate a couple of hours to the man.
We began by taking the Ernest Hemingway Memorial Trail walk, which is less than a mile, and adjacent to a local golf course. The memorial statue sits in a beautiful, shaded section of the trail, complete with flowing creek and wooden bridges. The previous day, we ate lunch next to the Pioneer Saloon, which was a pub Hemingway used to visit back in the fifties and sixties.
Memorial Day we arrived at the Ketchum Cemetery at about noon, and walked over to his gravesite, where a man was using a special marking tool to transpose the lettering from Hemingway's grave onto a large white roll of paper. He stood up, and removed the paper so I could get a picture for this story. The combination visits to both his gravesite and memorial on the trail, made for an awesome couple of hours, and I recommend you do it if in the area, if you haven't already.