One Potato, Two Potato . . .

Until now, the only thing I've ever known about Idaho was 'taters.

Now I know different.

I tried to rest on our drive to Idaho, as I was just coming out of the woods from having been pretty sick.  As our travels take us deeper into the west, I've made a few observations.  There are cattle guard crossings on interstate ramps.  Hotels commonly have round pen corrals out back for those traveling with livestock.  If you see a stadium, it isn't for football.  Stadiums are for rodeos.  Wal-Marts have their own fly-fishing mini-stores within the store. 

You can smell smoke here.  We've been dodging forest fires since southern Wyoming, but this is the worst we've seen.  I've learned a lot about them.  Most wildfires are caused by lightening.  The owner of the campground where we're staying has a permit to farm about 100,000 acres of government land just outside Twin Falls.  His family has been ranching/farming this property for generations.  Two days before our arrival it all burned (caused by lightening).  He shared pictures of the devastation with us, and they were gruesome.  Not only was the land black and charred, but he showed pictures of his cattle that didn't make it.  STOP READING here if you have a weak stomach.  These cows just exploded.  It was so awful.  Intestines literally burst outside of them.  When you consider how many hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland, forests, and wildlife have been completely destroyed by these devastating fires, it's overwhelming.  This poor guy's family has just experienced a complete loss.  After day three, the Bureau of Land Management finally let them back onto the property to estimate the damage.  He was able to trailer some horses up to the ranch, and rounded up the surviving cattle.  Here's the problem.  There is no grass for them to graze.  Hay is too expensive for him to feed them through the winter, and all the fencing burned anyway.  Because it was government land, he went up one morning with some Idaho Senators to see about securing state funding to rebuild the fencing.  The estimations just for fencing were in the millions of dollars.  Even if he did get the government to fence in the land, it would not be suitable for cows to graze for another two to three more YEARS.  This man was completely broken.  He'd called in every favor he could to see if anybody from Nebraska to Montana would let him put his cows out on their pasture so he wouldn't have to sell them.  If he sold, it would mean the end of five generations of his family's income, identity, and home.  This is the story of just one affected rancher.  Imagine the total cost of forest fires across the west.

So everywhere we went in Idaho, there was a smoky smell, and an overhanging haze across the landscape.  After that dark intro, I feel bad admitting that we still managed to have a really good time.

We don't have to go far to impress CBR.  He's developed a new fascination -- inspecting dead bugs on our windshield.  He counts them, talks to himself about them, and wonders where their heads are.  Shortly after we pull to a stop, he jumps up in the dash for a closer look.

He could stay here all day.

Once we pulled CBR out of the dash, we went exploring.  

Situated on the Snake River, Twin Falls is a very pretty city.  Very clean . . . except for the unavoidable smoke.  Our first stop was to see Shoshone Falls.  Shoshone Falls is called the Niagara of the West.  These waterfalls are actually 52 feet higher than Niagara Falls.  They stretch 1,000 feet across the Snake River.  Unfortunately, you can't tell from this picture, or in person.  Much of the Snake River through Twin Falls is dammed for electrical power, and agricultural use.  Pair that with extreme drought conditions throughout Idaho, and you get a pretty, but somewhat underwhelming waterfall.

Can you see the rainbow across the waterfalls?  The kids can't stand it when I make them pose with the sun in their eyes.

Adjacent to Shoshone Falls is Dierkes Lake.  This lake has a sandy beach, a floating dock, diving board, and hiking trails to some pretty fun cliff jumping.  The water was icy cold!  We decided to stay and play for a while.

It took LAR the longest time to work up the courage to jump.  It really was cold!

My husband and I were dying to jump off the surrounding cliffs, but were unsure about how to find a safe place to jump.  Enter Grady.  Grady noticed right away that my husband was not a local.  Grady, a Twin Falls native, cordially escorted us around the cliffs and pointed out all the best jumping spots.  He took us on every jump, and was so encouraging and hospitable.  He's also a fifth grader.  After a hike up one of the cliffs, Grady told my husband that he thought he was "cool", and why he thought so.  I'll let Grady share his reasoning himself . . .

After a few jumps in the FREEZING water, we warmed in the sun beside a playground.  The kids were playing on the playground, and we were enjoying some alone conversation.  It didn't last long.  An uncouth young girl, seemingly desperate for the approval of her boyfriend, began shouting the most lewd obscenities at her boyfriend's roommate.  My kids were soaking up every awful phrase.  We quickly gathered the kids and went for a hike.  (But, not before I made an opportunity to ask her why she chose to sit right beside an area designated for children's play if she couldn't guard her mouth any better than that.) 

One day we drove to the exact center of nowhere to visit Bruneau Dunes State Park.  It was the most confusing array of terrain.  I'm still not sure what to make of it.  It was a desert, and prairie, and mountains, and a lake, and huge sand dunes, and even marsh.  huh?  Anyways, rather than try to understand it, we just played on it.  This place is home to the highest sand dune in North America - 470 feet.

Almost to the top.

Pictures never do it justice.

 From the top, the greatest fun was to just jump all the way down.

Yeah, I used to be a gymnast.

I swear, these pictures don't do it justice.  CER was like an Olympic long-jump champion on these dunes.

We're traveling with three kids.  We're in Idaho.  So, naturally, we made a little time to do some arts and crafts with potatoes.  After a long day of jumping around on hot sand, we carved designs in potatoes, and let the kids stamp them in paint.  They made like 133,000 sheets of potato stamped artwork.

Potato stamping.

If Bruneau Dunes is in the center of nowhere, I dare you to try to find our next destination on any map.  I had never heard of it.  We drove and drove and drove and drove to find Craters of The Moon National Monument and Preserve.  While this was a long drive, I must say we enjoyed it.  LAR is our in-house comedian.  When the mood strikes her, this girl commands the stage like a professional.  I can't tell you what she says that's so funny.  It's not really her words.  When she gets on a roll . . . it's her accents, her tone of voice, her wit, her timing, her delivery, her ability to pull back from something 3 weeks ago and tie it into today.  Seriously, she had us all laughing so hard.  You can always tell when she's getting wound up.  We call it "approaching the stage."  I know the drive to Craters of the Moon was long, but we hardly noticed it with LAR "on stage."  I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard.

Craters of The Moon turned out to be one of the neatest places we've visited.  Chiefly because it was so different from anything I'd ever seen before.  Here's the story . . . it's basically 618 miles of a federally preserved volcano.  While now dormant, the last eruption was an estimated 2,000 years ago.  The landscape now is an unbelievable lava field and caves formed from lava tubes.  In 1983 an earthquake caused further cracks and separations in the earth's crust, and (drumroll, please) they're expecting another volcanic eruption at any time.  This place is so geologically rich!  NASA even sent the Apollo 14 astronauts to Craters of The Moon.  They were sent to study how to collect different samples of volcanic rock for their expedition to the moon.  Since much of the moon's surface is covered by volcanic materials, it was very important that they know something about the lava they would encounter. This was the reason that the astronauts visited such places as Hawaii, Iceland, and Craters of the Moon.

Atop Inferno Cone.  6181 feet.  Excessively windy, I might add.

Tiny fragments of molten lava make up this 6181ft. mound.

A sea of lava as far as you could see.  CER walking to the caves.

Indian Tunnel.  A huge lava tube.  The floor of this tube is just ridges of cooled lava.  Hard to see, but LAR is climbing on lava rocks in blue shorts.

Science for today.  Craters of the Moon has a Lunar Ranger program instead of Junior Ranger. 

 

We saw these things called "Potato Bars" in the grocery.  The packaging touted, "Original Idaho Candy Bar".   We had to buy them.  They're awful.  A nasty mix of coconut and potato with a pinch of chocolate.  I see why these treats never made it outside of Idaho.

Playing on the banks of the Snake River.  Centennial Park in Twin Falls, ID.

Hiking around the Snake River.  Perrine Bridge in background.

Overlooking the Snake River, Idaho.

Snake River Canyon.

About a week and a half into "road schooling" the kids, I thought I might lose my mind.  Something was dreadfully wrong.  Nothing was going well.  I spent a few hours alone at Barnes and Noble in Twin Falls one night trying to read, research, and pray about a solution.  Afterward, I met up with my gang and we took a walk across the Perrine Bridge that overlooks the Snake River Canyon.  At 486 feet, this is a spectacular place to be at sunset.  As we were walking along the bridge . . .

Turns out, the Perrine Bridge over the Snake River is one of the few places where you can legally BASE jump 365 days a year.  We met a couple who traveled all the way from Cincinnati, OH just to jump.  It was incredible to watch.

We also enjoyed another "first" in Idaho.  We slept in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Idaho Falls.  After shopping for groceries, we just nestled in for the evening.  I went, again, to a Barnes & Noble for a few hours to finish my search for new home school curricula.  (As an aside, I pin-pointed the problem with our home school.  It's not the curricula.  It's not even the wobbly table.  It was ME.  I just needed an attitude adjustment.)  After my Barnes & Noble date with myself, I returned "home" to Wal-Mart around 10pm.  This Wal-Mart was in a very nice area of Idaho Falls, and I really felt very safe.  There were at least four other motor homes sharing the parking lot with us.  However, as I was pulling in the parking lot, I notice my husband standing outside with his hands on his hips.  His face was all business.  Apparently, while I was out, he'd been watching a drunk man on a bicycle circling between the motor homes and the Lawn & Garden department of Wal-Mart.  He stuck his bike under our neighbor's camper, with an apparent mindset to sleep there.  My sweet husband gently urged him to move on.  The guy acted confused.  Again, my problem solver husband suggested that the police were on their way, and that he should move on.  At that, the poor guy biked away in a hurry . . . in the most hilarious zig-zag pattern he could manage.

We'll forever remember all our "firsts" in Idaho.