The Writer's Block

The next part of our road trip took us to Idaho Falls, where we camped several nights and drove around, visiting various zoos, museums and other sights.

Coming from So Cal, and being raised around noisy traffic, dominating billboards, pushy people and nauseatingly populated cities, I ‘ve just got to say that Idaho is gorgeously modest and understated. From the barely visible farm houses set far off the main roads to the enormous stretches of land dotted with nothing but potato plants, and the tiny, almost non-existent (except for the giant potato out front) building in Blackfoot which publishes a brochure to draw traffic to its “Idaho Potato Expo” (which turns out to be a dinky museum/visitors center/photo-op that we accidentally drove past twice) to the equally diminutive and weather-worn (but internally fantastic) Shoshone-Bannock Indian, which we also accidentally drove right past.

On the other hand, we had more opportunities to teach our kids hands-on history lessons and visit zoos and museums (inexpensively, I might add) in Idaho than we would have, had we chosen to drive up the coast of our own state. We managed to drive out to Soda Springs to see a man-drilled geyser spout, long before we reached Yellowstone, learned about the Oregon-California Trail in a neat interactive museum in Montpelier and toured the inside of the spectacular Minnetonka Cave, as well as being able to visit a replica of Fort Hall.

The visitor’s center at the first rest stop you reach upon crossing the border of Utah into Idaho on Interstate 15 is actually open AND manned (womanned really) and she was very willing to highlight all the neat places a tourist would be interested in seeing in Southeastern Idaho. Had we not talked with her, I’m almost certain we would have never driven across miles of roads that seemed endlessly uninhabited except for the occasional lonely farmer and a few blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em towns, to find these places.

After leaving Idaho Falls, we moved our 18-foot Fun Finder to a campground at Lower Mesa Falls, Idaho. From there we were able to visit both the Upper and Lower Mesa Falls and we even made a trip to West Yellowstone for some brief souvenir shopping. West Yellowstone seems to capitalize on the tourism aspect of it’s being the most accessible point of entry from the West Coast. There is an IMAX theater showing, among other films, one about Yellowstone’s history, which, while I found slightly interesting, did not do the park justice, in my opinion. I am grateful that I did not view this film in West Yellowstone until we drove through again after seeing most of the western side of Yellowstone in person.

We also took a drive, quite a bit out of our way, to Spencer, Idaho, because we were informed there was an opal mine area there that we could pay to mine for our own rough opals. Turned out that they were not operating at the present time, but we were able to browse the store and learn a bit about how opals are mined. We returned to our campground with a nasty storm at our backs, a first taste of the sudden weather changes that can take place in this scarcely-tamed country.

Photos from our road trip can be viewed at http://s206.photobucket.com/albums/bb76/LybargerFamily/