| I didn't have to be up and out quite as early this final morning of the trip. There were some things in the Twin Falls area I did want to see before driving back to Boise for my flight home. |
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| The first was Shoshone Falls. |
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| Lots of mist blowing on this cold June morning. It was in the low 50's, which was a pleasant refresher after a week of 90+ temps. Fortunately, instead of the shorts I wore for most of the trip, since this was a flight day I had on jeans. |
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| The Snake River past the falls. |
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| A deer the other day and now a cow. |
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 The Snake River Canyon. You youngsters would not remember the significance of this place, but I do. |
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| It was here on September 8, 1974 that
Evel Knievel attempted to jump the canyon in a rocket-powered cycle
called the Skycycle X-1. It was an unsuccessful jump, as the
parachute deployed too early and he floated down into the canyon.
This earthen ramp that was built for it is still there. For a kid in the 1970's. this was just about the coolest thing ever. |
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| Twin Falls also has a big ol' LDS temple. |
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| Just one more place before Boise. |
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| The Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument. |
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| You can't go traipsing around looking for fossils, but they have some on display. Here we have 3-4million year old skull fossils of a baby and adult Hagerman Horse. |
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| And mastodon molars, jaw bones of a giant marmot, vole and muskrat, and skull of a saber-toothed cat. |
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| A large mastodon skull. |
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| There is more than just the visitor's center. The Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument covers a decent amount of land. This was at the Snake River overlook. I drove along and crossed over the Snake River many times on the trip, from southern Idaho up to eastern Oregon and Washington. |
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 Out here is where the Oregon Trail continues to the coast. |
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| Even a tumbleweed has to find shade from the sun sometimes. |
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| I think it would have been a much easier for those pioneers if the Oregon Trail had been paved like this. |
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| Made it back to Boise, but much too early to head to the airport. So I decided to visit the campus of Boise State University, oddly enough my third campus visit on the trip. |
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| This is the football stadium with the blue field. |
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| The Student Union is a rather large complex. There was not much going on though, since it was June. I am sure they have a summer semester, but this was a Saturday so I did not see many students. |
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| Groundbreaking for the Administration Building was started in 1940, one of the few remaining buildings on campus started before World War II. |
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| The Boise River forms the northern border of campus, with a park on the other side. |
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| Assembly Hall, now the Hemmingway Building, was built in 1941 to originally house the Department of Music. Most of campus has a modern look with much newer buildings. |
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| I saw this, I guess oven, and figured it must be some historic remnant and thinking that sign would tell me what it was. Nope. It's just there with no context. I can't even find reference to in on the internet. |
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| Still a little early, I drove to a local park to kill a little more time. Boise seems like a really nice place to live. |
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| Waiting for my flight, a bag of these seemed an appropriate snack. |
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| Say goodbye to Boise, boys. |
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| If you had told me when I was a kid that I could watch a live baseball game on a tablet while on a plane, I would have said "Who are you? You are a stranger. Get away!" |
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| Backing out from the gate at Denver
International Airport, where I had a nice overpriced margherita
pizza for dinner. I got home a little after 1:00 a.m., rather
exhausted despite trying to get some rest on the plane. And that's about it. I didn't know what to expect on this trip. Idaho is not some place that has been on a bucket list or anything, but the scenery is generally spectacular and the more than 2700 miles of driving was worth it. |
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