Today started as an extension the night before, as we had driven through the night. We left Missoula around 9pm as the sun was going down. Our goal was to do a 9 hour drive through the night down to the Idaho falls area to see the sun rise on the Shoshone Falls. This drive was pretty smooth with minor elevation and not many curves so it allowed for a relaxing drive to listen to music and audio books while Ashley slept. This was enjoyable to me being who I am, one to enjoy time to myself to reflect.
We reached Idaho Falls around 5am and took a two hour nap until the sun started to come up. We had about an hour and half to get to the falls still so I allowed Ashley to wake up and drive the rest of the way. Upon arrival to the small canyon park we realized it was a 2$ entry fee, which was unexpected but it was worth every penny because we were presented with a view fit for kings. This river (the Snake river from yellowstone ) feeds this waterfall in a large canyon that the city of Twin Falls Idaho was built around. This was a great surprise and made us happy to be off to such a good start to the day. We decided not to make coffee in the morning and head east to the city again.
We found that if we took a detour we could check out a site on my atlas that I had never heard of before…Craters of the Moon national monument . This was another great surprise as it featured almost 500 square miles of volcanic rock that had been there from millions of years.
We stopped at the visitor center and picked up a map of the park for its features and short hikes we could do. We determined that there were two must dos, and one was a small volcano to hike to the top of and the other was a cave. We started with the volcano first.
The volcano was only about 500 feet high which was about a quarter mile hike to the top. Not very difficult for the length. This features an expansive view of the park and monument and gave us a feeling of being on the moon to see how vast the pumice (volcanic rock) was.
The next stop in the park was a volcanic cave. Of course all this is a dormant volcano… so there was no worry for too much heat. In fact it was very cold inside the cave when we descended. Ashley loved to go cave exploring, but myself was a little more fearful. I stopped about 500ft in and let her go in a little more while I waited in the back and kept an eye on things. This was an incredible experience… and even more satisfying seeing that it was a complete surprise and random encounter. This cave was the last bit of our short tour around the park so we decided to head back to Idaho Falls. We still didn’t have a definite plan for the trip as we had options, so after stopping for a quick lunch at subway we decided to head to Grand Teton and Yellowstone national park. This was odd since we had been to this park before this large trip, but I decided to check it out again and use the time wisely.
The drive from COTM was incredible to myself. There was not much going on in the flat landscape except for the line of dormant volcanoes you could see forming somewhat of a continental divide along the horizon. I found this personally fascinating…and wondered if they had any names.
Once we headed out of Idaho falls after lunch we were about an hour from Jackson hole (grand tetons main city), and we found a great campsite along the side of the same river that fed Shoshone Falls. We were lucky to find a great campsite and it was only 15$!
Since we had an easy day and a low budget we decided to tour Jackson hole and stop at a brewery and have a nice dinner. The brewery featured an ice ring around the bar which was a unique and great idea I thought! I had a wonderful steak at a local restaurant and with the end of the day at hand we headed back to the camp to have a wonderful fire and enjoy the evening sounds. Overall this was a great day full of surprises and better than expected results. We were excited to explore the parks the next day as well.
EXPENSES
2.12 water
22.40 gas
4.75 Mcdonalds
22 breakfast
1.50 coffee
14.76 gas
20.67 subway
20 beer
75 steakhouse
13 beer
12 camp
Total – 219.84