Hello Everyone!
I’m back in the mountains and it is wonderful to be here. I know I was in the mountains in northern Utah, but the Idaho mountains feel different somehow. Or maybe Idaho towns feel more like mountain towns and that’s what’s different. I don’t know, but it’s nice to be here and to be enjoying cool, sunny days and incredible views. My first full week in Idaho has been a good one. I really enjoyed my time in Pocatello and have made my way north and then west from there and I am writing to you today from the little town of Challis, the largest town in Custer County with a population of just over a thousand people. The Salmon River is nearby and the town is surrounded by mountains. I’ll bet it’s cold and very isolated here in the winter, but it sure is nice to be here in the spring. Before I forget, I had a nice article about my journey written a couple of weeks ago in Canvas Rebel magazine. If you’re interested in reading it, check it out here.
It was late when I finished up this post last week and I am always grateful for the libraries that stay open until 9pm. It was cold and raining out so I grabbed a quick beer up the road and then tucked into my van for the night. The rain wasn’t too bad, but the wind really picked up overnight and blew through all of the next day with gusts up over 50mph on a regular basis. According to the locals, the wind is quite common around here and we were lucky the rain kept the dust down.
The rain would come and go on Thursday, but the wind continued through most of the day. It wasn’t very nice to be out in, so I decided to head up to the town of Fort Hall on the Shoshone-Bannock reservation to visit their museum. As soon as I got to the museum, the lady working there came out to greet me and she was just wonderful. She told me so much about her people and her family and what life was like for them there. Her husband had built the building that the museum was in and she was the one responsible for the collection. The museum itself was a little watered down and while it had some beautiful displays of beadwork and regalia and some of the tribal history of the two tribes represented, it didn’t get into the Bannock War or the Bear River Massacre or much about their origin stories or spirituality at all. This nice lady told me that this was by design and the tribal elders didn’t want to put any of that information on display. Thankfully after chatting with her for at least an hour and a half, she filled me in on most of those things and in reality most American Indians have much more of an oral than a written tradition anyway. She told me so much that it was a bit overwhelming as I don’t know as much about the Shoshone or the Bannock as I do about other tribes in the region. While she was talking, I already felt myself forgetting things I found particularly interesting and wished I were taking notes. She was a great-grandmother herself and talked a lot about what her grandmother had taught her to give you some idea of the timeframe she was referencing. At the end of the day it seemed like a lot of it boiled down to the basics – treat others well, spend time with your family, and try and laugh often. I really enjoyed our conversation and could have stayed there all afternoon, but she had a report that was due, so I took off. I went across the street from the museum to the tribal casino so I could make a “donation” to their general fund before heading back down the road.
The wind was still blowing like crazy as I headed back to Pocatello. I called an old friend of mine and caught up with him for a while which was nice. Then I went to the Palace Theatre for a community performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It was opening night so the place was packed. Because it will run most nights for the next month or so, the two leads will alternate and the other narrator who wasn’t performing that night sat next to me, so I got a little of the inside scoop. This show was originally performed in the 1970s and is incredibly retro to that time period – it’s very 70s, but also a lot of fun. The cast was great and while there was a bit of bumbling and stumbling (it being opening night), they did a great job and I really enjoyed it.
I had a bunch of little things to get done on Friday morning, but once I finished my errands I went out to the Bannock County Historical Museum just south of town. This was another museum that didn’t really tell me very much, but it was also quite enjoyable. They had an eclectic collection of old newspaper presses, furniture, Indian photos and beadwork, wagons and a great old fire truck. Outside was a recreation of the old Fort Hall which was unfortunately closed for the winter. Fort Hall was originally a trading post established by Nathaniel Wyeth in 1934 and then sold to Hudson’s Bay Company in 1937. The fort was a major landmark on the Oregon Trail and a place where emigrants could resupply on some things or get an axel repaired and generally take a couple of days off from the trail. When the local tribes were moved onto a reservation, it took the name of the fort, so the town I had been in the day before is also called Fort Hall. The rebuilt fort looks like it would be interesting, but all I could get was a photo of the outside.
On the way back into Pocatello, I stopped by the visitor center and picked up some literature on Idaho. Outside of the center were a half-dozen historic markers which gave me more information on the local area than either of the museums did. From there, I hit the library for a while and then had a nice long wander around downtown Pocatello. The weather finally cleared and it was a magnificent night to be out. On top of that, it was the town’s monthly Art Walk so there were a lot of people around and the galleries along Main Street were all open late. Pocatello is my kind of city – lots of old buildings and signs to take photos of and they’ve also got a magnificent neon sign preservation committee which has saved dozens of old neon signs around town. At one point I was walking by the city’s old fire station and I stopped to peak in the windows and saw a Porsche parked inside and lots of cool art on the walls. While I was snooping, the owner of the building saw me and asked if I wanted to come inside. Stan was from Alaska and had noticed my Alaska hoodie so he invited me in. He had moved to Idaho to be closer to his grandkids and had bought the old firehouse to use as his personal gallery and covered parking garage. He had some amazing artwork in his gallery and was a sculptor himself, having had several of his pieces on display in the Smithsonian galleries. We chatted for a while and he invited me to go to his other building up the road and help myself to his rooftop deck to take some photos out over the city, an offer which I took him up on and got some lovely views over Pocatello to the surrounding mountains. I continued my stroll around town until the sun went down and then popped into one of the breweries for a pizza and a beer to end the day.
I parked overnight there near downtown and woke to another beautiful day. It was Saturday, so I thought I would treat myself to a nice cup of coffee and a scone at a cool old café called Gate City Coffee. I enjoyed my coffee and read my book for a while and then started to notice the old photos on the wall. I got to chatting with the owner who showed me around and pointed out an awesome historic photo of the block the café was on with one building missing that had burned down – that building had been replaced by the one we were in. Leaving there I took one last cruise through Pocatello and then headed on up the road.
I made a short stop in Blackfoot which looks big on the map, but that’s all relative in Idaho. There wasn’t much there except the Idaho Potato Museum which I have actually been to more than once in my life, once probably being enough. I did stop in for some really decent barbecue and extremely friendly service at Blackhawk Barbecue which is in an old Texaco station. I usually keep my barbecue consumption to south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but I gave it a shot and I enjoyed both their brisket and their ribs. I had a quick beer in the Tumbleweed Saloon and found out that Blackfoot is also home to the Eastern Idaho State Fair which is a big deal when it comes to town. Beyond that, though, there wasn’t much to do there which suited the bartender just fine. He liked his quiet little city and I can’t say that I blame him.
I hopped back into my van and cruised on up the road a spell and stopped in the Blackfoot Rest Area to do a short walk around Hell’s Half Acre. With a name like that, how could I not? Hell’s Half Acre is a BLM recreation site with some nice trails around the exposed Pāhoehoe lava of the area. It’s very reminiscent of Craters of the Moon National Monument which is not far away. The lava came to the surface through a crack and slowly oozed out onto the landscape, with the exposed top layer cooling first and then wrinkling as the lava beneath continued to flow. The heat which created the lava comes from the Yellowstone hot spot which used to be underneath eastern Idaho, but the earth’s crust has shifted over the last several million years so it currently sits well northeast of Hell’s Half Acre and keeps Yellowstone percolating. The longer trail was only about ¾ of a mile and it was definitely nice to stretch my legs and see the weird volcanic landscape.
While I was there in the rest stop, I thought it was as good a place as any to change my oil which was due, and then I continued on to Idaho Falls. I remember the only other time I passed through Idaho Falls was with my mom and stepdad many years ago and at the time I was rather taken-aback at how modern the city felt compared to the rest of the Rocky Mountain towns I had been to. We didn’t stay long, but I thought I would give it another shot. If you look really hard, you can see some of the historic buildings hiding in the center of town, but it seems they are really trying to be more of a modern city. I know I don’t give a lot of space in this blog for modern buildings and architecture, so I thought maybe Idaho Falls would give me the opportunity to correct that, but after wandering around with my camera for a while, I just wasn’t inspired by any of it. Oh, well! It’s a nice enough town and I enjoyed a stroll along the Snake River and some of the unique benches along the way. It was Saturday night, so I had a couple of beers and particularly enjoyed The Celt which was busy and had some live music going on. I wasn’t there long though, as I was tired so I ducked out early and called it a night.
Sunday was Easter so I put on my shirt and tie and went to Easter Services at First Presbyterian Church. I’ll admit I don’t really know the difference between the Protestant denominations, so I picked First Presbyterian based on the building itself which was old and I wanted to have a peek inside. It was a nice service and moved right along, running for about an hour. They had an orchestra of bells which was nice and was sometimes accompanied by a couple of trumpets, and the choir did a great job with their hymns. They called all of the children up for a little talk about Easter which was heavy on the bunny and why we call it “Easter” (from the Old English Ēastre, the name of a Saxon goddess associated with spring), and light on the crucifixion and resurrection which I thought was quite appropriate. There was a lovely floral cross in the middle of the church all and beautiful lilies all around. It was an uplifting service and I was glad I went.
After church I decided to check and see if the Museum of Idaho was open and, to my surprise, it was. I really enjoyed this museum despite its hefty $20 entrance fee. It had some great Idaho history to explore and a temporary display full of Permian “monsters” as they called them since there were technically no dinosaurs in the Permian Era. These monsters were animatronic, so they blinked and moved and growled and the kids really loved them (and I thought they were pretty cool too). My favorite fun-fact I learned in the museum was that the word “Idaho” is actually just gibberish and has no meaning in any language. Someone made it up and said it meant “gem of the mountains” which seemed appropriate, but that has since been proven false. I also learned that the seal of Idaho is the only one in the country designed by a woman, that in 1870 a third of Idaho’s population was of Chinese ancestry and that Earnest Hemmingway finished his book For Whom the Bell Tolls at the Sun Valley Resort. I had a great afternoon wandering around the museum and finished up right as it was closing for the day. Then I went up the road and did some laundry, made some calls, had some dinner and retired to my van for the night.
Yesterday I got some work done at the library there in Idaho Falls and then headed off towards the mountains. Leaving the city I followed the path of Goodale’s Cutoff which was a spur of the Oregon Trail that had become the preferred route by 1863. Then I continued northwest into the mountains and found myself in the small old mining town of Mackay. Occasionally I stumble into a town which is just too good to leave, even if it is still early in the day, and Mackay was just such a town. Surrounded by the Lost River Range, there is magnificent scenery in every direction and plenty of parks to sit and admire it from. The town itself has some lovely old buildings to photograph and is just a nice place for a stroll. They have a nice rest area to overnight in (one night only), and the laundromat even had showers for the bargain price of $1.75. I spent a relaxed afternoon in Mackay and dropped by the L7 Taphouse in the evening to watch the college basketball championship and have a couple of beers. The bar was immaculate and the bartender was super friendly and welcoming. Two of the patrons had seen me wandering around earlier so they stopped me and we chatted for a while. It was a lovely evening in a beautiful town.
This morning I enjoyed my breakfast looking up at all of the mountains and then headed on up the road to Challis. There was some beautiful scenery along the way and I even drove past Mount Borah, Idaho’s tallest mountain. I came straight to the library here in Challis, so I haven’t had time to explore the town, but it seemed like a nice place on the drive in.
And that’s it for this week, y’all. I’m going to finish this post up a day early because I don’t know what my internet options will look like tomorrow. When I finish here at the library, I will have a look around town and then maybe continue on south to Stanley. Over the next few days I hope to have a nice tour around the mountains of central Idaho on my way towards Twin Falls. I don’t really have much of a plan yet, so I’m just going to take it as it comes. I’m hoping the weather stays as nice as it is today. I hope you’re having a great week out there and I hope you’ll come back next week to see what I get up to. Thank you, as always, for reading.
-Mike