A Week in Idaho

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We enjoyed our stay in Salt Lake City and are glad to have the motorhome's annual service done. We spent a total of 26 nights in Utah but it's time to move on so we can make it up to Washington state for the couple of things we have planned this summer. We have 10 nights and about 630 miles before we need to be in Kennewick Washington. That's a little faster pace than we have been doing but not too bad. We haven't reserved any camping spots along the way figuring the area we will be traveling through isn't that much of a tourist destination. Plus the two spots in Idaho we are thinking of staying at are both Elks Lodges that don't take reservations.

Our first stop is Jerome Idaho - about 230 miles from SLC. It's mostly expressway driving and isn't that bad of a drive. We did stop at one confusing rest area/truck weigh station along the way for a break. As I pulled past the scales to get to the truck parking area, the guy at the scale flipped on the red traffic light to get me to stop. He walked out and stopped to examine our towing connection. I just assumed he was verifying we were compliant but he came up and told us one of our connections was dragging on the ground and nearly worn through. After we pulled into a parking spot, I discovered that a cable tie or two had broken and the trickle charge wire was rubbing on the ground and had indeed already gone through the outer jacket and one of the wires. This is what keeps the Jeep's battery charged while we are towing. Hopefully we won't have a dead battery when we pull into Jerome.

The Snake River Elks Lodge has 4 spots with electric only but it is 50 amp. We come prepared with enough fresh water to hold us over for about a week. The place is adjacent to the "93 Golf Ranch". In fact the parking lot is used for the golf course, the Elks Lodge and the camping spots. One other motorhome is parked there when we pull in. Our Jeep started up without issue, but I will need to make up a replacement cable before we continue on. It's not a busy camping spot. There was the motorhome our first night and they were replaced by a fifth wheel the next night and we had the place to ourselves the third night. During the early evening, the parking area was mostly full of cars from golfers.

Sunset at Snake River Elks Lodge

After getting setup, we head into the lodge bar to register. At $10 a night, it seems like a good deal. The bar itself is different than ones at other Elks Lodges. This one had big windows looking out onto the golf course. Most others have been more cave like with dark confining spaces. The bartender was quite nice and gave us some good advice of things to see and do. She was even willing to call in some favors of locals to get us on a kayak trip. We declined that offer but did have a couple beers. Since it was "Taco Tuesday" with a self serve taco bar, we decided to come back for dinner a little bit later and another beer.

Just several miles south of the lodge is the town of Twin Falls which turned out to be a much larger place than I was expecting. They even had an electrical supply store so I could get the things I needed to replace my charging cable. The Snake River goes thru the heart of town and just to the east is Shoshone Falls Park. It's just $3 to get in and was a nice place to visit and explore. The falls were going reasonably well but apparently during high runoff times, the falls are several times wider. One of the geocaches in the park is a 5/5. The numbering system represents the cache owner's difficulty and terrain rating of the cache with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. We have only done three 5/5 caches because they generally require some special equipment to handle the terrain aspect. Since we were walking right past the place, we figured we should at least look at the situation. It turned out this one was slightly overrated for both difficulty and terrain. Not that it was an easy climb up the hill and it did take a bit of a scaling of a cliff to reach the container. I would say it was more like a difficulty 2, terrain 4.

Wide View of Shoshone Falls

Just a Hint of a Rainbow

Looking Downstream

From here we headed further down the trail that followed along the river but a couple hundred feet above the water. It had turned into a rather hot day but we wanted to make it down to the spot where Evel Knievel attempted to jump over the Snake River back in 1974. I vaguely remember hearing about the stunt but I can't say I remember much about it. Of course I was only 13 at the time and I barely remember what I had for dinner last night!

Sign at the Jump Site

Evel had wanted to jump the Grand Canyon but the government would not permit it, so he ended up finding something comparable. The Snake River is about 1600 feet wide and he leased land on either side. He built a huge ramp on top of a hill and had a steam powered "Skycycle" but the parachute opened early and landed on the rocks near the river on the same side he launched from. All that is left now is the huge hill and some of the concrete supports that held the ramp. Yes, it's just a big mound of dirt, but one with some history.

Looking Up the Hill Where Ramp Had Been

Side View of Hill

Just a little further east is another waterfall and power plant. This one is not as large and definitely not as visited as Shoshone Falls but it was still interesting to see.

The Other Falls in Twin Falls

The next day we head back into Twin Falls to check out the visitor's center. There is a great viewing area to look down on the river and see people kayaking. The bridge that takes Route 93 over the Snake River is one where BASE jumping is permitted. Unfortunately there wasn't anybody out that appeared to be looking to jump and I wasn't able to talk Chris into trying it!

A Few People Kayaking the Snake River

The Perrine Bridge - 486 Feet Tall

Centennial Park is not far from the visitor's center but is down at water level. We find a small trail that gets us partway back towards the bridge, but it peters out so we head back. There was one section of an overhanging cliff wall where dozens of swallows had built mud houses attached to the cliff. We stopped to watch them fly in and out. It was unclear how they know which one is theirs. It almost looked like they were first come first served.

Dozens of Swallow Homes

About 10 miles east of the lodge is Minidoka Internment National historic Site. This place was an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II. It housed just over 9000 at its peak. Today there is not too much left to see but they do have a reconstructed guard tower and a few of the old foundations of some of the buildings. We walked around and ended up in the visitor center which really just looks like a house. In fact there is very little signage identifying what the building is. I suspect this is one of the lonelier assignments for a ranger.

At Minidoka National Historic Site

We stayed three nights at this Elks Lodge before heading further north and west. Just past Boise is the town of Caldwell where there was another Elks Lodge. This one had 8 camping spots. There is water and electric. Although the electric is only 30 amp and the water is at every other site to be shared with your neighbor. There were four of us there the first night so we all ended up in every other spot. On a couple of the nights, there were one or two more rigs. When another motorhome is pulled into the spot right next to you, things are tight. While sitting at our dining room table, I might not have been able to just hand the salt and pepper to our neighbors but I could easily tossed it to them! This lodge charges $15 a night which is still reasonable.

On our first full day we head into Boise. We found a park called Hillside to Hollow Reserve. It must be somewhat new since the maps don't show it in green like most parks are, but it is a popular place. Especially for people with dogs since they do not have a leash law in the park. We only realized it was there because of all the geocaches hidden there. The hills in the park are big and the trails tended to not have any switchbacks so the climbs were rather tiring. Once at the top you were presented with a great view of Boise, but then you needed to come back down and head up the next one.

View of Boise from Hillside to Hollow Reserve

We had fun but we could see dark clouds coming in from the west and we figured we should head back before we get wet or struck by lightning. We took a trail that skirted around the hills so we didn't need to do as much climbing. Of course there was one more cache that was "only" a few hundred feet away. The trail to it was probably two or three times that distance and that extra time was the difference in us getting back to the car dry versus what ended up happening. We were only wet, not soaked. And there wasn't any lightning, but our car was only one of two or three that remained. Given there were probably 40 or 50 when we got there, everyone else had the good sense to get out before the rain. By the time we ate our lunch, the rain had passed so we when into Boise and found some of the favorite geocaches.

The next day we drove to the World Center for Birds of Prey. This is a great place that is open to the public and is only $7 per person. They have all sorts of indoor and outdoor holding areas for a wide range of birds of prey. All of which are not able to be released for one reason or another.

Entrance to World Center for Birds of Prey

Staring Intently

Colorful

Ready to Eat

You Looking at Me?

One of the volunteers working there had a couple different presentations we attended. Three times a day, they bring in a bird to a small presentation room so you can see them up close. We ended up doing two of the sessions since they bring out different birds for each show. The two we saw were Gus, a peregrine falcon and Cody, a Harris's Hawk. They were both fascinating to see.

Gus Shows Off His Wings

Aimee with Cody

There is also another large building we toured that is dedicated to the sport of falconry. Falconry is where you train a bird of prey, like a falcon, to hunt for you. It is a rather ancient sport and the building there has the largest collection of information and displays pertains to falconry. The center has outside demos of birds of prey flying right over your head on weekends during October. This would be really fun to see. Maybe something else for our bucket list.

Sample Falconry Hoods

Next we headed into downtown Boise for a few more caches we had wanted to try the other day but ran out of time. One was in a park near the library right next to the Boise River. At first it didn't look good that we would even be able to physically get to the cache. The river was very high and moving extremely fast. There were these three foot tall plastic wall sections all along the length of the walkway that were some high tech version of sandbags. The problem was, we needed to be on the other side. We could tell the river was no longer a threat to the cache area and we eventually found an opening in the wall that allowed pedestrians and bicyclists to pass through and cross over a bridge.

The Boise River was Raging

The cache in question was modeled after one we saw in West Virginia last fall. It is a gadget cache. In this case a birdhouse looking container that was looked with a padlock. The whole thing was painted with a grid of letters. Your mission was to figure out which letters to use and then rearrange them into a word that was the combination for the lock.  It only took us a couple minutes before we were signing the log.  As we were just closing the cache up, it started to sprinkle. Not enough to keep us from one last cache next to the library.

One morning we had a big thunderstorm come through the area. It wasn't terribly windy but the lightning and thunder were intense. Plus the rain was coming down in buckets. While sitting in the rig, the motorhome was shaking from the thunder every bit as much as if we were driving down a bad road. By the time it was over, the parking lot at the lodge looked more like a lake.

The View from Our Rig After Rainstorm

We took advantage of the fact that this region of Idaho is wine country. The climate and soil conditions seems much better suited for vineyards than that of southern Arizona. Chris had picked out two wineries that were open on our last day in the area. Our first stop was Huston Vineyards. When we pulled in, we were the only customers there. We were immediately greeted by a big friendly black lab named Hershey. This dog was an expert in getting attention. I gave her a minute long belly rub and as I walked away she was still laying on her back as if to tell me I wasn't done.

This place worked out well for us. We prefer dry wines and favor white wine. This region make Riesling which is one of our favorites from back home in the Finger Lakes of western New York. Tastings were $5 unless you buy something. We found two wines we liked so you might say the tasting was free.

The next stop was Fujishin Family Cellars. We walked in just behind three other women. We were having a good time tasting the wines here. The women said this was their third stop so far so they were in a happy mood. Tastings were free and you can try up to 6 of their wines. We picked up one more bottle and then headed out to do a bit more sightseeing.

Elaborate Bridge in Downtown Caldwell

Waterwheel

Pizza Joint Spans the River