Idaho

I wouldn’t consider myself a well-travelled person, at least by many standards. I’ve been to around 40 states and a small handful of countries. In those travels I’ve seen some beautiful places, places that take your breath away, and places for which words serve only an injustice. Today we crossed into Idaho. At first it seemed much like Wyoming. Stunning, but kind of what you’d expect. Picturesque mountains covered by coniferous forests. But then you drive down the final mountain side and seemingly the whole of Idaho opens up before you. In a massive display of plains and prairies, there is only space. Lots and lots of space, the vast majority of which was completely uninhabited, unsettled, and altogether unspoiled by any of the efforts of men. For as far as the eye could see, nothing but barren space inhabited solely by sage brush. We drove 8 hours today, over 5 of which were in Idaho. In the first 4 hours we saw two towns. 2! And I wouldn’t really call them towns. They were more like a handful of mobile homes positioned around a gas station in the middle of the sage brush. How these people eek out a living, I haven’t a clue. There’s no farming. No livestock or crops. No industry. No-thing! For hours!

Something about that landscape was severely intriguing to me. A sense of mystery settled in as mile after mile produced no further answers than had the previous miles. Driving for hours through nothing. We simply don’t see this in the Midwest. You might drive an hour, at most, between towns, but that’s only if you take the backroads. But today’s driving was all highways, although I will say that Idaho’s standards of what constitutes a highway is much different than Indiana’s.

It should be noted that we did discover one interesting thing in the wasteland of south-central Idaho. INL. Google it. Idaho National Laboratories. I first spotted it as a grouping of strangely shaped buildings tucked several miles off the highway. A few minutes later we passed the entrance. For the next hour and a half we saw nothing else. There we would miles and miles of sage brush and then suddenly another location of the INL. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. I think I’ve watched too many spy movies or read too many conspiracy theories because this place truly wigged me out. I haven’t googled it yet (although I told you to) partially because I’m afraid I’ll get wrapped up in some secret black-site operation and I’ll have to be brainwashed to forget what I know. BTW, CIA people if you’re reading this, I know nothing, saw nothing, and plan to leave it at that.

Okay, so back to Idaho, the non-government conspiracy part. Did ya’ll know there’s a National Monument called Craters of the Moon that is basically just 43,000 acres of old lava formations? You’re driving through the sage brush when all of a sudden you crest a hill and BLAM, black peculiarly-shaped boulders as far as the eye can see. I had to pull over and see these things up close. Here’s an up close look at an ancient lava boulder. Its hard to perceive the scale, but this rock is about 4 ft in diameter. There’s 43,000 acres of these guys, some bigger, some smaller.

So that’s about where the foothills start. You see them a long time before you climb them. Strangely the road just keeps skirting around each one. Never gaining elevation. Just when you think you’ve got to start going up, nope, you just drive around it, and all the ones after it, until what looks like the last foothill before the plains reappear. That’s when the roads decides it’s had enough of the flat land and would like to see something different. And all of a sudden a landscape that seemed so lonesome, eerie, and unwelcoming, gives way to the most vibrant geography imaginable. If you e ever gone through a tough spell only to have that trouble suddenly gone and replaced by blessings, you understand how I felt today. Upon coming into these mountains, I immediately felt a sense of refreshing. There’s something warm and welcoming about them. Compared to the harsh, sharp rocky crags of the Tetons, these mountains appear soft with large sloping faces, each covered in a mixture of sage brush, pine trees, and wild flowers. The snow capped giants come into focus to set a pristine backdrop for the beauty of this treasure.

We turned off the highway just past Ketcham onto a first road saying it was a National Park access road. Once passing a handful of homes, the view opened up into an stunning valley, large sloping mountains on either side lead your eyes to rest on a small but rushing brook winding its way through the bright green valley. A handful of designated campsites are scattered with easily a quarter mile or more between. Following this road back for about 5 miles we found heaven.