Monday, 30th June
Last Look At Craters Of The Moon
Whoosh! It’s pack and go this morning! One last walk around some of the lava fields, where I re-inspect the lovely yellow flower I found last night, when I had chosen to take evening pictures rather than go for a run. That was pleasant, but limited as there was no real sunset, apart from the sun going down behind a rather large hill, though I found a plant that looked very much like a thistle, but with a lovely yellow flower, but I did not get a very good pic as it was getting dark, hence my return in the morning. The plant I have now found out is called Blazing Star (Mentzelia laevicaulis) and is a night flowering plant, which I think is quite unusual (but then that is possibly just me) as well as beautiful.
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| Blazing Star - Night Blooming Flower! |
Goodales Cut Off
Our plan to day is straight forward, but will be modified as we progress. Our original plan has been to drive West and camp at Hegarman, but we are now going via a southerly loop to take in the waterfalls of Twin Falls. We drive out of the COTM NP leaving the lava behind, only to find that the road simply skirts along the edge of the lave field, which stretches for mile after mile after mile. Did I mention about Goodales Cutoff? No it is not a surgical procedure. For an empty space on the map Southern Idaho has a lot of history. We have now found ourselves driving along the very route that many of the settlers travelled in the 1800’s to take up the land freely given to them under the Homesteaders Act. The whole route is called the Oregon Trail, this section was an improved part of the route which cut across the lava fields. It has constantly been in our minds the human endeavour that went into those people crossing such inhospitable lands, I think I mentioned it back at Columbia Gorge and the Scrublands of Washington State, but here the emigrants had to travel across miles of black, very sharp, very hot, very craggy lava beds, often barefoot, and get wagons across it as well.
The Manhattan Diner in Shoshone City
After about 30 miles the lava fields of COTM NP gave way to the lava fields that were not part of the park, amazing scenery, but boring to describe, apart from rough black rock covered by sage and scrub. We stopped in Shoshone for a cuppa. Talk about one horse, one stop light, sleepy railtown, wow Shoshone has got it all. The railroad (only freight now) runs down the middle of the town and the Victorian fronted saloons and shops sitting in the sunshine of clear blue skies actively exude sleepiness. Anyway we found the Manhattan Café and stopped in for our drink, slipping badly on the diet front I had a cinnamon roll, which although only $2.19 was massive, fresh and home made, Sally slipped into a ‘scone’, which I think was really a posh word for Navajo Fry Bread, which is a donut style dough deep fried sprinkled with cinnamon sugar – Oh Yummy. Like those old horror films of people arriving and being overcome with sleepiness and being trapped forever, and our bodies would then be used for all sorts of interesting practises, we could feel the soporific nature of this place, so we got out quickly and continued South to Twin Falls. However we had been warned in a dream (no actually the waitress mentioned it) that we should look for the Perrine Bridge on our way to Twin Falls.
The Perrine Bridge
We didn’t have much trouble there as the road goes across this massive steel arch bridge, where it meets and crosses the Snake River. Yes we have returned once more to this great river. The bridge crosses a gorge, 1500ft long and 486 ft above the river it is pretty impressive, as the is the river gorge. We stopped and took pics, talked to a lovely couple from Texas who were here on a course to learn about Ancient Roman History. We then crossed the river to go to the visitor center, just on the south rim of the gorge, to get directions to the waterfalls (remember the waterfalls, that is why we are here), once we have this information we are about to leave when I spy a couple of people sat at the gorge rim where they appear to be packing tents into rucksacks, they have helmets, rock climbers? No, Base Jumpers. We find out that these guys throw themselves off the bridge with a parachute. In fact the bridge is famous for its base jumping because (and here we learn a new facet of Idaho culture) it is one of the few places where it is a legal activity, no permit required, no insurance required, you can just throw yourself off the middle of the bridge and no one minds. This meant another delay while we watched the guys preparing and then watched one of them actually jump off. Quite amazing (I am sure that this is another way of describing insanity, but they were really nice guys). Our vantage point was also where Evil Knievel did his Snake River Jump/attempt in his rocket powered Sky Cycle.
At Last The Twin Falls
We really had to move on, so we now drove to Twin Falls, the waterfalls, which is now a park and an HEP station, however the falls are not quite what they were as one of the falls has been dammed to help with the power production. We then travelled a few miles to the Shoshone Falls, now these were spectacular, they say they are twice the height of Niagara Falls (the American side I expect, which is smaller than the Canadian bit). Here we had our lunch being most impressed with the lovely sight of this waterfall, reinforcing our respect for the power and size of the Snake River.
We were now running out of energy so decided not to make a further detour to Balancing Rock SP (another time perhaps) and instead used the Interstate 84 to drive directly to our campground in the almost equally sleepy (as Shoshone) town of Hegarman, where we stopped in the local and very pretty Hegarman RV Village.
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