Three Beautiful Days, Then....Southern Idaho

I have nothing against Idaho. Northern Idaho is beautiful, but there’s absolutely nothing to look at in southern Idaho except fields and cows and in some cases, nothing at all.

Exhibit A.

I’m actually sitting in the car in the middle of freaking nowhere while an accident is being cleared off the road. And I’m not happy about it. Except that I have time to sit here and write this.
Anyway, on to more interesting things. The three days before this one were amazing. We stayed in Loveland, CO and the next morning drove through Colorado and over the Rocky Mountains. At our highest elevation we were over 11,000 feet and it was snowing like crazy. In front of the car we could see everything through a transparent sheet of white snowflakes. It was beautiful, although the car wasn’t terribly fond of the driving in such high elevation.

At 11,000 feet

The entire drive was something I’ve never experienced before. As we began our ascent, it was hot and completely clear. As we climbed, we began to see snow on the tops of the mountains and the higher we got, the more snow we saw until we hit the summit and it was completely white out (nothing on the roads though, thank goodness). As we descended again, the snow began to disappear. But as soon as we’d gotten to a low point, we began climbing again. And the snow came back, although we didn’t hit anything higher than 10,000 feet again.

A frozen lake somewhere in the middle of the Rockies

We did this a few more times before we hit Glenwood Canyon. We got concerned when we saw signed that told wide trucks to exit because they were prohibited through the canyon. But as we came around the corner, the sight we saw was stunning. On both sides of us were craggy canyon walls, so close I could barely take a picture. As we got to the end of the canyon, five or so big horned sheep were grazing on the steep hill right next to the highway.

The Canyon

From there we got to flatter land. But the snowy mountains remained to our right and when we came out to where we were staying the night in Grand Junction, they began to look similar to the sides of the Grand Canyon. Shades of purple and blue and orange danced up the sides of the hills. Our hotel room faced the hillside, and we enjoyed the view for the few hours of daylight we had before we went to sleep.

The view from our hotel window

The next day we crossed the state line into Utah, and the landscape changed again. Gradually the stony hillsides became rolling hills, which Jim said were actually huge rocks rounded by the high winds. It was a long drive from the main highway to Arches National Park, and again, as we got closer to our destination, the landscape changed. The gray rocks gave way to sharp, red cliffs. If you blinked an eye on the drive through the park, you missed something. The road began with a steep ascent through huge red cliffs, some completely flat and smooth, others sharp and stony. The arches themselves were amazing too, carved out on the rock from wind and rain. We weren’t able to see the whole park because the weather was getting bad, but what we did see was amazing.

Arches National Park

From there we had a long drive to Cedar City, UT where we stayed the night in a Kabin at a KOA (yes, they spell it with a K).

On the way there we drove through the San Rafael Swell where, as the informational signs posted at the “scenic points” said, only bandits and criminals braved. It was like a larger version of the Grand Canyon….

San Rafael Swell

…Well we just passed the accident. It was a semi truck carrying logs that rolled over, it looked like a couple of times. The wind is really bad today and it’s a two lane (I call two lanes one in each directions…that’s what this is) and 65 MPH. We think maybe he was going too fast and the wind hit the side going around the corner and rolled it. The guy couldn’t have survived. The cab was completely crushed and the worst of it was on the driver’s side. I’ve never seen a semi truck so crinkled like that. The passenger’s side door was crushed into a Z shape and a firefighter was standing on it. The whole front was smushed and the logs were scattered everywhere. A helicopter came to life flight the guy out, but it was waiting too long on scene for the guy to have been in it on his way to the hospital when it left. It’s too sad to think about the man’s last moments of life. But those guys drive like crazy sometimes. And awful things happen when people aren’t careful.
…so, back to Utah and the San Rafael Swell. It was like a larger, wider version of the Grand Canyon and it’s steep cliffs and deep gorges, as if they were carved out of the ground…and they were. We stopped and took pictures at every “scenic point.”

Our Kute Kabin at KOA

We drove through another mountain range, hitting snow at the summit that lasted till we were almost back to the bottom. It was windy that day too. It scares me. I hate the wind and this little car flies all over the place in the wind. It’s too light.

Our Kabin was cool, though. It was a single room with a queen sized bed, a set of bunk beds, a little shelf between them and a desk by the door. In front there was a swing on the porch and a little fire pit and picnic table on the grass. We ordered pizza for dinner. $5.99 each for two two topping pizzas at Dominos. It was a little bizarre to have the delivery driver knock on our Kabin door, but it was fun. We had the rest of our Wisconsin table wine (I didn’t like it much. It was a little on the sweet side and stung the back of my throat more than I like) and ate our pizza and gave names to the picture files on the laptop.

In the morning we had cereal for breakfast and left early. It was about 80 miles from Cedar City to Bryce Canyon. We decided at the last minute to go to Bryce instead of Zion. Either would have been amazing, but with our time constrictions, we decided to only see one and Bryce was it.

The canyon was full of what they called hoodoos, big craggy rocky formations that seem to grow up out of the canyon floor. We took the 2.8 mile hike 800 feet to the bottom and back up. It was considered a moderate hike, but it kicked our butts. The very beginning of the descent and the very end of the ascent were incredibly steep. It was neat to stand next to these things though. They looked so much bigger from the bottom than the top. And they were so red! It made the sky look incredibly blue.

Bryce Canyon

The rest of the day was sluggish and sleepy. We stopped to get gas and I made a couple of sandwiches and we downed a Starbucks Double Shot each. We’ve been pretty much living on those things where there are no Starbucks stores. They gave us enough energy to get through the rest of the trip to Pocatello, ID.
We did make one more stop in Salt Lake City. No one I’ve talked to watches it, but there’s a show on TLC called The Little Chocolatiers. It’s about a couple of “little people” who own a chocolate shop a little outside of the city. In the show, they are contracted to build these amazing things out of chocolate and candy. In one episode we saw (we only saw the show one night in a hotel room when we were cruising channels for something to watch), they made an underwater seascape for a benefit event for the local aquarium, and in another one a couple in the community was moving…I don’t remember where, but they were going to live in a log cabin, so one of their friends came and had the shop make a log cabin out of chocolate. It was incredible! They’re so talented. Anyway, we went to the shop and got chocolate covered cinnamon bears (which we saw them make on the show…they’re delicious!) and chocolate peanut butter truffles and chocolate covered raspberries. The only other thing we ate were the raspberries cause they were fresh and completely delicious. It was well worth the stop.

So now we’re in southern Idaho and completely bored with the scenery. We were going to go to Thousand Springs, which we found in our “Off the Beaten Path” book, but then we read the section again and you can only see it from a resort on the other side of the river and they recommend binoculars and a telephoto lens for the camera. We decided it wasn’t worth it, so we’re going to Craters of the Moon National Monument and not the springs. We’re staying in Missoula, Montana tonight, which I’m excited about because my dad lived there for a little while when we was a kid. I’ve been there before, but I was young then, and I think it’s going to be cool to see it again as an adult.

Until then, I’m sitting and staring out the window at absolutely nothing.