10/04/2026
A VERY LOWMAN WEDDING STORY - 2 min read
There are some stories we'll probably tell at SouthFork for a very long time... This is one of them.
Last weekend, our Lowman community experienced a terrible accident. We don't want to take anything away from the seriousness of that day or the people affected by it. But sometimes, in the middle of difficult circumstances, smaller stories emerge that remind you exactly what kind of community you live in.... And this one is remarkably Lowman.
We had a wedding at SouthFork that weekend. Family had traveled from Iowa. Old college friends had come from across the country. The lodge was full, the ceremony was set, and everyone was waiting for Erich Thalacker and Kyla Dickey to walk down the aisle.
BUT, unknowing to everyone, right BEFORE the wedding, the bride, groom, and their photographer decided to sneak away for some photographs with the Sawtooths as their backdrop.
Great idea.... Until the highway closed.... For more than four hours.
Suddenly, the bride and groom were stranded on the wrong side of the accident while an entire wedding sat at SouthFork waiting for two fairly important people to arrive.
Enter Lowman.
Somewhere in that stopped traffic was an elk hunter pulling a trailer... There was also a local with a side-by-side.
People started talking. A plan started forming.
Vehicles were abandoned. A motorcycle came out. The side-by-side was put to work. And what followed was essentially a backcountry wedding rescue mission to find a way around the closure and get a bride and groom back 16+ miles to the SouthFork Lodge.
- No Uber.
- No alternate highway.
- No cell service worth mentioning.
Just a few people looking at each other and saying, essentially: “Well… let's figure it out”... And they did. The race was on through the mountains.
A bride. A groom. An elk hunter. A local. A motorcycle. A side-by-side. A wedding full of people waiting in the forest.
You couldn't write a more Idaho ending.
They made it.
Erich and Kyla got back to SouthFork, walked down the aisle, got married surrounded by the people who traveled across the country to celebrate them, and somehow ended up with a wedding story considerably better than anything we could have planned. AND for many of us, including several members of the wedding party, we didn’t even know they had left the property or about the rescue mission... until well into the wedding reception that evening.
These photos capture some of that adventure—and a few of the heroes of the day who didn't know the bride and groom, weren't invited to the wedding, and had absolutely no obligation to help.
They just did... And that's the part of the story we'll remember.
Lowman is tiny. We're tucked away in the Boise National Forest, where cell phones mostly don't work, roads occasionally close, weather makes its own plans, and sometimes getting where you're going requires a little creativity.
But when something happens, people show up for one another. To the strangers who became wedding transportation, to the locals who helped make a plan, and to everyone who stepped up that day: thank you.
You saved a wedding.... And you gave Erich and Kyla one hell of a story to tell someday.
Congratulations, you two. Your marriage officially began with an adventure.
And somehow, we can't imagine a more perfect place for that to happen than Lowman, Idaho.
