7/14/19

Haven’t posted since October. We spent winter and spring at Thompson’s Mills again. Stayed longer than normal because we had a wedding to go to in Port Orchard at the end of June, so decided to stay in the area.

We left the mill July 8th and headed east through central Oregon. We were going to stay in Mt. Vernon, Oregon for a couple of nights but couldn’t find an RV spot, so we kept driving until we got to Unity, Oregon.

The next day we continued into Idaho and stopped in Twin Falls. We've stayed here about a week and made a lot of day trips while we were here.

The afternoon we arrived we went to Perrine Bridge, a bridge that crosses the Snake River 486 feet above the water. It’s a popular place for base jumpers. We didn’t see anyone jump but we did see a couple of guys repacking their parachutes.

Then we drove out to Shoshone Falls. There was still quite a bit of flow over the falls. In late summer the falls are almost dry.

 

Wednesday we drove to Balanced Rock State Park and got a few pictures of the namesake.

The Hageman Fossil Beds were in the same direction so we continued on to the visitor center for the fossil beds. It turns out you can’t go out to the fossil beds to see fossils. On the way out to where the fossil beds are there are hikes out to the Oregon trail, where you can see some of the wagon ruts. It was too hot and there were too many bugs to hike the six miles we would have had to walk, so we just took some long distance photos that don’t show much.

On the way back to the trailer we drove along the Snake River and saw quite a few springs dumping water into the river.

We went out to Shoshone Falls again Thursday morning the 11^th and then went on to the Twin Falls waterfall, upstream of Shoshone Falls.

Friday the 12^th we drove to Three Island Crossing and Malad Gorge. Three Island Crossing (Glenn's Ferry) is part of the Oregon trail where the emigrants crossed the Snake river and followed it to Fort Boise on their way to Oregon. If they didn’t cross the river they actually headed south-west on a shorter route, but that route had fewer resources to help the during their travels. There aren’t many historically significant artifacts left at the crossing, but the visitor’s center has a good presentation about the history.

On the way back to Twin Falls, we stopped at Malad Gorge (also called the Devil’s Washbowl) and took a few pictures. The gorge is 250 feet deep, carved out by the Malad River.

Downstream, there’s a waterfall coming from a spring on the east side of the gorge.

Saturday we drove out to City of Rocks National Reserve - about two hours southeast of Twin Falls - near the Utah border. We hadn’t heard of it before but we found it on an Idaho map and wanted to check it out. On the way there we saw signs of a brush fire in the hills to the east of Burley, Idaho.

The park itself is a really interesting geological area. Many of the emigrants moving west camped there because it had water, grass for grazing their animals and shelter among the rocks for sleeping. Today, it’s a popular area for hiking and rock climbing.

We’ll be heading to the Idaho Falls area Monday, then toward the Casper, Wyoming area, before we go to Rapid City, South Dakota.