Reflections of My Travel

click for pix
We started the day with a heartfelt “today is going to be a good day.” And it was. First, we went to see Shoshone falls. They call it the Niagara of the West because it’s plunge of 212 feet is apparently higher than Niagara’s. It was very pretty but I didn’t really see the comparison. We then went to see the city’s namesake, Twin Falls, but they turned it into a hydroelectric plant so it was pretty disappointing and sad. We then drove to the middle of nowhere to see Balanced Rock. It was pretty interesting, a cone-shaped rock 48 feet tall standing on a 3 foot base. We tried to see Hagerman Fossil Beds but it was closed so we went on to Malad Gorge. What a pretty site! It is right next to the interstate and you cross this little metal footbridge from which you look directly down on the Malad River cascading into the “Devil’s Washbowl” 250 feet below. This was about the prettiest bright aquamarine pool of water I’ve seen. There was a viewpoint on down the gorge where you can look back at the river pouring into the washbowl. Very pretty. Our big stop for the day was the Craters of the Moon. And it was well worth it. I highly recommend it to anyone. Right up there with seeing the Moonbow in Corbin, KY. Over the past 15 thousand years, there have been 8 big volcanic eruptions in that area, leaving a lava field covering 750,000+ acres. The largest lava field in the contiguous US. I has been a little more than 2,000 years since the last eruption, making it overdue for the next. They monitor the seismic activity closely. It was so neat. We hiked to the top of one of the volcanic craters and all we could see was hardened lava in every direction. It was breathtaking. When it got too dark to see anymore there, we drove on to Idaho Falls for the night.

click for pix
Not the best day. Woke up to the sound of icy rain on the car. When we got moving, it was so foggy that we couldn’t see much of anything (Randal said that he’s been through Washington twice now and hasn’t gotten to see it yet). Then we get to Oregon. I don’t like Oregon. I’ve been there, crossed it off my list of states unvisited, and never need to go there again. Their welcome sign was the crummiest sign I’ve seen yet (yes, I have been taking pictures of every state sign, with the exception of MS which I apparently did not know how to work the camera well enough to capture it). Looked no different from any other street sign. Then there were crummy little towns that we had to go through. Then we couldn’t even get any road condition information. So finally, after forever, we got out of that state. Idaho had an open visitor center (shock) with a great little book from which we decided Twin Falls would be our destination for the night. It got dark before we got there and there was a very Christmassy house along the way that would have almost rivaled the Osborne light, but of course no place to pull off and take pictures. We got to Twin Falls too late to see anything so we got a hotel and planned for a full day tomorrow.

click for pix
This was primarily a drive day. After searching for another Best Buy which we finally found in Missoula. Our 2nd brand new camcorder was still giving us a message so we talked to them and we called Canon and finally decided to throw in the towel and buy a head cleaner and hope that we don’t have anymore troubles. If it doesn’t do the trick, I’m just going to cry. We drove across the top of Idaho, by Coeur D’Alene Lake, which I just might say is one of the prettiest lakes I’ve ever seen (of course, no scenic pulloffs to get pictures of it). We stopped in Spokane, WA to see if there was anything to do, which there wasn’t, so we headed down the road trying to find a place to camp. I do not suggest ever stopping in Sprague, WA. We got off there and wound up lost on some road that went on forever and was so foggy that you couldn’t see ten feet in any direction. We finally found our way out of there and decided to stop at the next inhabited exit so that we wouldn’t miss any more landscape. We set up camp in Ritzville, WA.