Continuing West

The area in Idaho immediately outside of West Yellowstone and continuing to the south is a beautiful area.  We’ve seen it referred to the Island Park area on several brochures.  Island Park is actually a town along this route.  Its claim to fame is that it has the longest “Main Street” in the world, at 33 miles long.  Yet the town has less than 300 people and is only about 500 feet wide in most locations.  The town was incorporated by owners of the many lodges and resorts along U.S. Route 20 in 1947, primarily to circumvent Idaho's liquor laws that prohibited the sale of liquor outside of city limits.

Since we drove through this town, we will add it to our World’s Largest collection.

This area is definitely worth coming back to.  Lots of outdoor opportunities here, including some of the best angling in the country, lots of backcountry trails for hiking, horseback riding, and ATV riding, and lots of great dispersed campsites.

Deb did another one of her Turn Here! calls when she spotted a sign for Big Spring.  This became our first stop of the day.  Big Spring is the primary source of Henrys Fork of the Snake River and produces over 120,000 gallons of crystal clear water each day.  It is also known for the large rainbow trout that congregate near the bridge over the river and wait for people to feed them.  We took a few crackers along and were throwing bits of cracker into the water and watching the fish snatch then from the surface.  We also walked around Johnny Sack’s cabin that is situated on the spring, but it is closed for the season, so no looks inside.  We’re seeing more and more of that... places shutting down for the Winter.

We took State Route 47 and stopped at Upper Mesa Falls and Lower Mesa Falls.  This road is probably one of the most beautiful roads I have driven in a long time as it winds through a canyon following Henrys Fork.  This is a hidden gem as I had never even heard of it before.

Ok, maybe not so hidden.  We arrived at Upper Mesa Falls about the same time as three school busses and shared the view with a whole crowd of middle schoolers.

Lower Mesa Falls could be viewed either from the end of a 1-mile trail (which we did) or from an observation point high on the canyon wall (which we also did).  Both offered amazing views of Lower Mesa Falls from rather far away.

As we continued driving, the route eventually climbs out of the canyon into an entirely different landscape, that of flat rangeland and large irrigation circles.

We noticed  the restaurant listings on an exit on US-20 had a Dairy Queen listed and both of us had a hankering for an ice cream fix, so we stopped there for some ice cream.  The chill of this morning had turned into mid-80’s heat, so ice cream really hit the spot.

Since we’ve been out in the wild for several days, it was time for some re-stocking, and Idaho Falls had a Costco and a Walmart.  The Costco gas station was one of the few in the country serving up diesel so we topped up on fuel also.  After these essentials we parked the RV downtown along the riverwalk, made some dinner, and took a bike ride.  Idaho Falls is named for the waterfall that divides the downtown and it has several miles of greenway bike trail along the river.

A major icon in the skyline is the Mormon Temple.  I think they intended it that way.

Deb found a dispersed camp site in the direction of our next intended visit.  A small campsite on Fish Creek reservoir, about two hours’ drive from Idaho Falls.  So we headed there.  We made a stop at Craters of the Moon National Monument to see if there were any campsites available as it was quite dark, but it was all full.  Google Maps said that Fish Creek was another half-hour west. Turns out the last 10 miles were dirt roads so it took us nearly an hour an a half to get here.  

It’s dark here and the stars are amazing.