Boise, ID

Snake river no longer snakes by the time it reaches Idaho Falls. The water is rather green too; it's no longer crystal clear like when it left Grand Teton Mountains. It nonetheless meanders through Idaho, watering farms along the way, and we followed the river to Boise.

Snake River, Dammed in Idaho Falls

In my imagination, Idaho has been a vast farmland. Like Minnesota, only for potato rather than corn. Maybe it was shaped by my memory of Spokane that I visited  some 35 years ago. I was just out of college and the computer terminal manufacturer I was working for sent me there to troubleshoot the problem a potato processing plant was having with our terminal. I remember farm circles all over underneath as we flew in on a prop plane. Spokane is in Washington, true, but it is at the border with Idaho, it may as well be Idaho.

Snake River in Twin Falls

We were met with desert scape, not farm scape soon after we we left Idaho Falls. Large part of Idaho is covered volcanic rocks and they looked not unlike Nevada or Utah desert. In fact the Idaho desert spills into Nevada and Utah in the South and Oregon to the West. The farmlands are limited to the Snake River basins. Farmers draw water from the river and make the desert bloom with the gigantic wheeled sprinklers that rotates around. And that is the reason why the farms are circles, not rectangles.

In the north, the Rockies branches out to form the Idaho mountains. We originally planned on following the Bitterroot range to Salmon, and then switch to the Sawtooth Mountains on the way to Stanley.  That route would've gently drop us off at Boise. We had to give up on that because charging the car in the mountains was difficult. We instead followed Snake River here.

Snake River Canyon in Twin Falls, our charging stop after Idaho Falls, was too enticing to pass up. Tesla station was conveniently located at the top of it right off the Rim Trail by the visitor's center. We walked the rim and the bridge while charging and then drove down to the river. We were going to kayak the river, but the murky green river was not too inviting. So I asked the lad there about hiking trail instead. He pointed us to Augur Falls Trail several miles down the dirt road.

It might have been a good trail if we had time (and I had energy). We didn't, so we were going to hike a mile to the bridge and come back. Except that we didn't find the bridge. We took a wrong trail and ended up at a pond. The sun was beating down on us and there was nowhere to hide. Rim trail toward Shoshone Falls would've been a much more pleasant hike in retrospect.

So, there you have it: Idaho is mountains in the North and volcanic lava deserts in the South, not a vast potato farmland. Snake River then drapes across Idaho desert on its way to joining Columbia. We saw Columbia emptying into the Pacific in Astoria, we saw it beginning in Yellowstone, and then we followed it all the way to Boise, all in this trip. And now I can say I understand Idaho. If nothing else, this trip has been worthwhile for it.

Somewhere between Boise and Oregon