Hello Everyone,
It’s been a pleasant but quiet week here in southern Idaho. I spent the early part of the week in the Magic Valley out by Twin Falls, and the latter part of the week in the Treasure Valley here in Boise. The weather started off sunny, quickly turned cold with freezing rain pelting down on me, progressed into some beautifully warm and sunny days and is finishing off cold and rainy. It is nice to be here in Boise, a comfortable and familiar city, and I’ve actually been taking it easy here the last couple of days as I needed to take a breather from the road and this is a good place to do just that. I’ve been able to catch up with a few friends, get some much-needed supplies delivered from Amazon, resupply on food and water and get ready for the road ahead. It’s been a good week on the road.
After finishing up this post last week, I set off to explore downtown Twin Falls. I’ve been to Twin Falls a few times before, but never really had any time to check it out. The downtown area was really quiet on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, and I had the streets almost all to myself. There are some great old buildings around, but mostly Twin Falls is a modern city. There’s a nice city park in the middle of town with an amazing old band shell which still apparently hosts the Twin Falls Municipal Band it was built for in the summertime, although it’s now called the Magic Valley Symphony. There’s a magical old post clock on Main Avenue, a couple of nice statues and some interesting historical signs to help understand how the city has changed over the years. I stopped for a delightful pint of porter at Koto Brewing Company and then headed out of the city center for the night.
The weather was supposed to be hit-or-miss on Thursday, so when I saw sunny skies in the morning I made a beeline for Shoshone Falls. Often referred to as the Niagara of the West, Shoshone Falls is a beautiful set of falls along the Snake River about 15 minutes east of downtown Twin Falls. It was sunny, but the wind was biting out there and you really couldn’t stand around for too long. I got some nice photos and enjoyed the view and then kept rolling.
I continued east and then north across the Snake River to the old Hunt Japanese Internment Camp, now known as Minidoka National Historic Site (“Minidoka” is a Shoshone word for a natural spring and is also the name of the county). I just wrote a few weeks ago about the Topaz Internment Camp down in Delta, Utah, so I’m not going to go into too much depth here. During World War II, 13,000 people of Japanese ancestry, many of them American citizens, were forced from their homes on the west coast and relocated to this camp outside of Twin Falls. Since I was last there many years ago, the Park Service has reconstructed some buildings at the site to give a better idea of what life was like in the camp. It seemed as though the rules were a little more lax at Hunt than at other camps, with a fence being put up and then taken back down again and guard towers which were usually unmanned. The interned people could get passes to go into Twin Falls for the day, but were expected back in the evening. That said, it was cold and bitter out there when I was there, and I know it is unbearably hot in the summer and the interned people were living in tarpaper barracks with cramped shared bathhouses. They did plant crops while they were there and became self-sustaining and even pitched in to help the local farmers with their harvests during the war. I’m glad that this place is there so that we don’t forget this awful chapter in our history. The saddest photos at Minidoka, to me, were of servicemen who traveled to the camp to visit their families before deploying to the front lines. I can’t imagine what was going through their minds to see their families treated in the way they were.
I was out at Minidoka for a while, trying to fight through the wind. When the freezing rain came, I hustled back to my van to warm up and had some soup before heading back to Twin Falls. When I got back to town, I went to the College of Southern Idaho’s museum for a while. It was a pleasant (and free) museum which had some interesting artifacts from the American Indians of the area and also quite a few pieces from Central and South America as well. The interpretation was fun, and the signs sometimes admitted they didn’t know what this mask or whatever was, but that it seemed interesting enough to display. There was also a whole case devoted to a former CSI student from Eastern Europe who donated a dozen items from her home country to the museum for their collection. On the other side of the museum was a great little natural history section and there was some nice local art on display as well. Leaving the museum, I went to the gym for a while, and then met up with my friend Brandy for dinner. She had been working late and the only place we could find serving food at 9:30pm was IHOP, but she was great company and I enjoyed our conversation over a late-night breakfast.
I had some things to catch up on Friday morning, so I didn’t get much of a jump on the day. I wanted to go to a little family restaurant called Norm’s for lunch before I made my way out of Twin Falls. Norm’s has been down on the end of Main Avenue for 50 years and it’s a great little old-school, local restaurant. I got the trout, which was delicious, and some Idaho mashed potatoes and really just enjoyed being there. Norm’s is my kind of place. After lunch I hit the library for a while and then took off down the road. Just outside of town, I stopped at the Twin Falls Historical Society’s museum which is housed in the old Union School building which shut down in the 1950s. The ladies working there were great and I enjoyed chatting with them for a while and the museum was well curated with lots of informative signs to read along the way. There were a few outbuildings as well with old farm equipment, wagons etc. I particularly liked seeing the yellow-bellied marmots running around (locally called “rock chucks”). Marmots are playful little critters and always make me smile.
Leaving the museum I went up to the Earl M. Hardy Box Canyon Springs Nature Preserve, just outside of Buhl. At the overlook near the parking lot you can see one of the many natural springs that make up Thousand Springs State Park. The water is snowmelt from the mountains and it percolates down and through the porous volcanic rock and then emerges at some point as a spring. The springs at the start of this canyon were crystal clear and really pretty. Continuing along the canyon rim, I found a trail down into the canyon which took me to some pretty waterfalls and great views up and down the creek. After the hike I stopped in for a quick beer at the tiny little West Point Bar just up the road. The ladies there were super friendly and I enjoyed chatting with them about the area. As the sun was starting to go down, I headed just down the road to Hagerman for the night. Hagerman is a cute little town of about a thousand people which has some nice historic buildings and the infamous Wilson’s Club which is one of Idaho’s oldest bars. It was a neat old pub with a beautiful wooden bar and some great tunes on the stereo. They had a case of the new Grillo’s Pickle Pabst Blue Ribbon beer which is due out nationwide next month. I didn’t expect much from a pickle flavored beer, but I had to try one and actually thought it was pretty good. I went across the street for some steak fingers which were grilled and not fried and much better than the ones I had had a few months ago in Boise. After dinner, I headed back to Wilson’s for one more (non-pickle-flavored) beer before calling it a night.
On Saturday morning I made my first stop at the Hagerman Fossil Beds visitor center just north of town. During the Pliocene Era, the area around what is now Hagerman was a lush wetland teaming with life including saber-toothed cats, mastodon and giant sloths. There were also quite a few horses in the area. It is believed that horses and camels originated in North America and traveled across the Bering Land Bridge to Asia, going extinct here between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago. It wasn’t until the Spanish brought them back in the 16th century that horses were reintroduced into the American landscape. It surprises a lot of people to know that the American Indians never had horses until the Spanish brought them over on their ships from Europe. There were over 200 horse fossils found in the Hagerman Fossil Beds dating back 3.5 million years. It’s a small but interesting stop.
As the day was warming up, I went down near Buhl and rented a kayak for a couple of hours. I paddled out onto the Snake River, past the area where the creek I had visited the day before came out of the canyon and continued on up to Blue Heart Spring. Blue Heart is just a beautiful little spot with calm, clear water at the base of massive volcanic cliffs. I’m sure it gets crowded on weekends and in the summer, but it was just me and three other kayakers out there that day. It was a quiet place to hang out for a while before paddling back up the river. There were a lot of pelicans out on the river when I was on my way back up, and I think they are really neat birds. They look kind of silly when they are standing around, but in flight they are beautiful and graceful to watch.
Leaving my kayak behind, I hopped back in my van and made my way out to Glenn’s Ferry. During the peak of the Oregon Trail, the Snake River was a major obstacle for the westward traveling emigrants. One of the better options for crossing the Snake was right at a place called the Three Island Crossing. It was still a treacherous crossing and depending on the river level it often proved disastrous. In 1869, Gustavus Glenn constructed a ferry to get people across the river which made the crossing significantly easier. A small settlement grew up nearby, taking its name from Glenn’s Ferry, and a dozen years later the Oregon Short Line Railroad came through town. The town is now centered on the train tracks, but still extends down to the river. I wasn’t there long, but thought it was a pleasant little town with some cool history. From Glenn’s Ferry I continued on into Mountain Home for the night. Mountain Home looks a lot bigger on the map than it actually is (the population is around 15,000), but it has a nice little downtown area and a few bars and restaurants which were all pretty quiet on a Saturday night. I had a nice sandwich at Kurly’s, the only place still serving food at 9pm, and then headed off to bed.
In the morning I wandered back downtown to the Manhattan Café, which had a good counter to sit at full of older local men enjoying their breakfast with a side of local gossip - my favorite kind of place to spend a weekend morning. My breakfast was good and I enjoyed a few cups of coffee while I read my newspaper and then took a nice long stroll around town. Across the tracks was the old Basque Quarter where Basque families lived while the men were herding sheep up in the mountains. Mountain Home was originally a stagecoach stop which grew into a railroad town. Today it is home of the nearby Mountain Home Air Force Base which keeps the economy there humming along. Leaving Mountain Home, I made a beeline for Boise, arriving in mid-afternoon. I went and caught a wonderful little production of Typhoid Mary at the Boise Little Theatre which wasn’t a happy story but was very well done and I enjoyed it. I spent the rest of the day lounging on the grass near the State Capitol and reading my book. In the evening I went to an old favorite, the Pengilly Saloon on Main Street to hear some live music and have a couple of beers. The band playing that night was called the Idaho Opry and they were really good. As much as I love exploring new places, it is also nice to be somewhere familiar and comfortable now and again, and it was good to be back in Boise.
I hit the gym and the library on Monday morning and then spent my afternoon out at the old Idaho State Penitentiary. The first buildings of the prison were built back in 1870 and it was an active prison for over a hundred years. I went on a guided tour of the facility which was well worth the extra $2 and lasted about an hour and a half. We heard all kinds of interesting stories about the men, women and children who had been held there over the years (the youngest was 10 years old). The state had carried out ten executions on the property over the years, all by hanging. The guide who took us around was quite knowledgeable and I really enjoyed learning about the prison, even if a lot of the stories were somewhat grim. After the tour I went and hung out in a nearby park for an hour or so and then went over to my friends Jason and Chasta’s house for dinner. Chasta had whipped up a real feast for us and I enjoyed sitting in their back yard and chatting late into the night.
The weather was supposed to be nice on Tuesday and I saw it as a great opportunity for a day off from everything. I did go to the gym in the morning, but generally spent the rest of the day taking it easy. I went for a nice lunch of lamb stew and croquetas at Bar Gernika in the Basque Block, which I had been looking forward to since I was last there in January. After a delightful lunch, I wandered down to the old Idaho Candy Company on 8th Street which has been turning out Idaho Spuds, Old Faithfuls and Cherry Cocktails since 1901. The gift shop there was small but had some great old photos, and free samples which is always a hit. After satisfying my sweet tooth, I popped up to The Reef, downtown Boise’s one and only tiki bar. The atmosphere was nice and I enjoyed a mai tai at the bar, but it definitely won’t go down on my list of the top tiki bars in the country (nor is it trying to). I spent the rest of the day chilling out in the park and enjoying the warm weather and then took a nice long walk in the evening, getting back to my van before the rain started.
It was still raining when I got up this morning and it’s still raining as I write this post. It’s going to keep raining through tonight and hopefully will stop at some point overnight. If it does, I’m heading out tomorrow on my way to Idaho City, an old mining town up towards the mountains. From there I will continue up into the mountains to see some of the small towns and lakes north of Boise. Then I plan to drop back down and out to Ontario, Oregon and then start out to the middle of the Beaver State, an area I skipped last winter because it was too cold and wet out there. Yes, gas is $5/gallon out in Oregon at the moment, but it seems silly to miss that whole part of the state before I start back east again. I might as well go see it now and there are a lot of spots I am really looking forward to. I will likely be back in Oregon by this time next week, but hopefully with some great stories from my loop through the southern Idaho mountains. I hope you’ll come back and see what I get into. Have a great week out there, wherever you are and I hope to see you back next week. Thank you, as always, for reading.
-Mike