Yellowstone and Idaho

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We began the morning in Gardiner, Montana, woke up early, and drove into Yellowstone. The park is definitely much, much bigger than I thought - it took us over an hour to get to Old Faithful. Of course, it is nowhere near ready to burst when we arrive, so we walked around it a little bit and saw many small bubbling pools. The water was not only crystal clear and beautifully tinted, but the heat coming out of them was enough to warm me even though I was a few feet away and the wind was blowing extremely strongly. Their one downside? They smelled like rotten eggs. Absolutely awful.

Then we decided to just sit and wait for Old Faithful to do her thing. And, as her name implies, she didn't disappoint. The wind blew most of the smoke into the water thrusting upwards but we could still see it. It lasted for about three minutes and then died down again, to wait another 90 or so before faithfully wowing visitors.

On our way out of the park we encountered a small problem. No, it wasn't more snow. Instead, it was more bison. We were driving and randomly had to stop. A park ranger came by and said that there was a "small bison problem." We didn't know what that meant - either they decided to use the road as a toilet, there was a fight, or there were just a lot of them. After nearly 20 minutes, we assumed that it must have been the third one as we saw scores of them stampeding towards the river. We had a few more small encounters with them as we left.

The trip through Montana lasted all of 15 minutes, but West Yellowstone is a cute little town. And then it was Idaho. Since we were running really early we decided to detour to Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. It would have been a quicker detour except that nearly half the route from I-15 to Arco (the closest town) was under construction. One lane. Slowly. But we made it to the park and it was awesome.

When I first heard the name I was skeptical. The AAA book says that it was where the US tested the lunar probes before sending them to the moon. But, like I said, I was completely unsure of what it would be like. Well, after having been there, I will say that it makes sense why NASA tested lunar probes there. The landscape rapidly changed from rolling green hills to black scrabbly looking dirt and trees that made me think of the moon (not like I've been there though...). It was just so...so...other-worldly. We even climbed up to to the top of one of the black sand cones and I was amazed. From that vantage point we could see the standard Idahoan landscape, but right near us, nope. Just ugly black dirt.

The loop through the park is only seven miles but includes some cool sounding places - Devil's Orchard, Inferno Cone.... But seven miles isn't that much and we were soon on the road towards Nampa, the city in which we decided to stop for the night.

Now, I didn't expect much out of Idaho. After the previous few states that were all really rural, I couldn't imagine a "big city" in the Treasure Valley. But Boise actually surprised me. Now, Boise and its nearly 200,000 people (600,000 if the entire metro area is included) is by far the largest city we've seen since leaving Chicago. And the roadways showed it. Since I-88 in Illinois was reduced to 2 lanes, we hadn't encountered a 3-lane highway. Well, I-84 through Boise was standardized at 3. And as we got closer to downtown it went up to 4. AND it even made it up to 5 lanes across per direction for something like three exits. Boise even had an interstate spur, I-180, to go to downtown and we were slowed down a little bit by traffic (construction, for lane expansion, helped). And Boise's buildings could be seen from far away. Any way I look at it, the Boise area impressed me.

10 miles past Boise was Meridian (65,000 people) and 8 miles past that is Nampa (80,000 people). That's why we decided to stop here for the night - lots of people around and near the interstate. Tomorrow is going to be a loooooooong drive through eastern Oregon. No interstates except for a small section of I-84 to get us into Oregon (for all of 2 miles). Klamath Falls and Crater Lake better not disappoint!

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Comments

[hminion1219]

Correction
Not like most people would notice, but it is I-184, not I-180, that goes into downtown Boise.