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Published: September 23rd 2014
Prospector Hotel & Casino RV Park is located on US 93 on the north side of Ely NV so a left turn upon exiting the RV park put me right on a course for Twin Falls ID. Unlike its sister to the south, US 93 north of Ely is not designated as a scenic route. Indeed, the route is quite nondescript. I made a stop in Wells NV to top off the fuel tanks of the driver and the Dodge Ram. Just short of Twin Falls, Informational Irene (my GPS) took me east on county roads and saved me several miles but robbed me of the opportunity to get a peek at the town. I caught I-84 and continued on to Batise Springs RV Park in Pocatello ID. The small RV park has few amenities but has spacious sites, is clean and well-maintained and is just far enough from I-84 to abate the din of the traffic.
Pocatello ID has a great history, few tourist attractions (save the scenery) and a couple of friends! Shoshone and Bannock Indian tribes inhabited southeastern Idaho for hundreds of years before the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805. Their reports of the many riches
Rejuvenating!
Idaho Scenic Loop Twin Falls to Challis to Blackfootin the region attracted fur trappers and traders to the area. As pioneers and settlers traveled the Oregon Trail, they passed through the Portneuf Gap south of town. Stage and freight lines soon followed (and, in time, the railroad), turning the area into a trade center and transportation junction. Pocatello became known as the “Gateway to the Northwest.”
Although thousands of migrants passed through Idaho, it was not until gold was discovered in 1860 that large numbers of settlers were attracted to Idaho. After the gold rush played out, the settlers who remained turned to agriculture for income. With the help of irrigation from the nearby Snake River, the region became a large supplier of potatoes, grain and other crops. Residential and commercial development had appeared by 1882. Officially founded in 1889, the name "Pocatello" comes from an Indian chief of the Shoshone tribe who granted the railroad a right-of-way through the area that now is Fort Hall Indian Reservation.
Pocatello, with a population of 54,255 as of the 2010 census, is the county seat of Bannock County and is the home of Idaho State University which in turn is home to the Idaho Museum of Natural History.
In a nutshell, that’s it! Looking through the travel literature, one might wonder why I had ever stopped in Pocatello. Truthfully, with the amazing history in Pocatello, I expected there to be some attractions that had not been disclosed in the sources I had utilized. A visit to the Chamber of Commerce, which doubles as the Visitor Center, found that expectation to be ill-founded.
All that having been said: 1) a good friend I worked with at the fire department retired in Howe MT – about two hours north of Pocatello; 2) Pocatello is located amid a bunch of scenic routes in Southeast Idaho; and 3) nearby Idaho Falls is home to the Idaho State Vietnam War Memorial.
Totally unrelated and unplanned, my printer, watch and camera all had taken a nose dive over the previous 96 hours. I found a watch at Walmart but could not find the other two items that met my expectations. The shopping opportunities in Pocatello are limited to be kind, so I took a 50-mile drive to Idaho Falls where I found the needed items at Best Buy AND visited the Idaho State Vietnam War Memorial.
According to an accompanying placard,
the abstract design of the Memorial allows the viewer to freely interpret its meaning. The 24' inverted V acknowledges the controversy surrounding the war and its shattering effect on the heart of American society. The names of 251 Idahoans who were killed in action or remain missing in action are emblazoned on the legs of the carbon steel sculpture. It took some time, but the design grew on me and I eventually found it to be a nice tribute to those we lost so futilely.
I had developed a seriously ambitious scenic drive for Friday, August 29, 2014. My general plan was to drive west to Twin Falls, northeast to Salmon ID, southeast to Terreton ID and back to Pocatello. According to MapQuest, that’s a trip of 572 miles. Although ID 28 between Salmon and Terreton is not designated as scenic by Rand McNally, it is by the Idaho Transportation Department. An alternate, shorter (471 mile) route was available if necessary.
The drive to Twin Falls was repetitive, and the first portion of the “scenic” drive on MT 75 was unremarkable. From Bellevue ID to Challis ID was just plain drop dead gorgeous. The area around Sun Valley
ID was quite congested with soccer moms (and even more soccer grandmoms) driving Mercedes and Lexus SUVs. If I had been born 50 years sooner, I would have liked to have grown up there but the congestion and commercialization makes the immediate Sun Valley area, for me, nothing more than “the price one must pay to see the good stuff.” Driving on north to the Stanley area, it’s an entirely different world. Nestled in the Sawtooth Mountains along the Salmon River, the drive on MT 75 is both beautiful AND serene!
Near Challis, I realized time would not allow me to complete my planned route before sunset; and what good, I would ponder, is a scenic drive in darkness? So, Plan B was catapulted to the fore. I turned southeast on US 93 toward Blackfoot ID. Although not designated by Rand McNally or the State of Idaho as scenic, the route does indeed have its picturesque moments. I passed a directional sign indicating the turn for Howe. Note to self: You’ll be back this way tomorrow.
Indeed, Saturday morning found me stopping at Butter Burrs Restaurant for a “recommended by the Chamber of Commerce” breakfast. The chamber folks
I spoke to were right on the mark. Very good. The waitress started me off with a huge homemade cinnamon roll. Then she brought the eggs, 5 pieces of very thick-sliced bacon and the cook’s own version of hash brown taters. Imagine, no toast! With a full stomach and most of the cinnamon roll in a “to go” container, I was off to see Jack and Connie Oar. Jack had retired in 1989 (nine years before I did), and I hadn’t seen either of them since. About once or twice a year we find occasion to swap and email or two about something.
When I pulled in the driveway, Jack came out to meet me. He looked just as I had expected. That’s not totally fair, because his brother, Tom, is one of the stars of the History Channel series “Mountain Men,” and Jack has made a couple of cameo appearances when Tom has come down to see him for this or that. That having been admitted, the first time I saw him on TV he looked just as I had expected!
In minutes, we were in his “hawk barn.” Jack has been a licensed handler/keeper of birds
Some Of Connie’s Handiwork
Visit with Jack and Connie Oar - Howe ID of prey for many years and has travelled the world (Russia, Greenland and India to name but a few) on research trips with various foundations and institutions of higher learning. Back in the 1980s when we worked together, I went to Jack’s place to watch him fly his birds. One time we spent the day together climbing trees to check nests he already had earmarked to see if the new occupants had a) hatched or b) were old enough, i.e., large enough, to be banded.
I believe one of the reasons I admire Jack so much is that, beyond high school, he is essentially self-educated. If he is not working with his hands, he is reading about something he can do with his hands. For several consecutive evenings, while we were watching some meaningless sit-com he was out on the apparatus floor filing and otherwise shaping pieces of metal – the firing mechanisms of a long gun (I don’t remember the specific type). He carved, chiseled, sanded and finished the stock as well. About all he purchased were the barrel and the spring for the hammer.
Jack and Connie bought a small fixer-upper farm house/log cabin out in
Let’s Add A Few Buffalo – WOW!
Scenic Loop SE Corner of Idaho the boondocks, searched for a dilapidated barn, got permission to salvage the materials and built a massive addition. When they pulled the siding off the exterior wall in preparation for the addition, they found the logs from the original cabin.
Connie is no slouch when it comes to working with her hands. She has won several awards for her craft work. We had a great time reminiscing and otherwise catching up before we had some delicious apple cobbler Connie had, of course, made from scratch. Now that The Great Adventure has moved (mostly) west, I hope to cross through the Howe ID area on a regular basis.
Labor Day found me out for another scenic drive way down in the southeast corner of Idaho. My itinerary was an amalgamation of three Idaho scenic byways – the Thousand Springs Scenic Byway, the Oregon Trail-Bear Lake Scenic Byway and the Pioneer Historic Byway. For those who watch the map as I travel, I took I-15 south, US 30 east, ID 34 south, ID 36 northeast, US 30 north (near Montpelier ID), ID 34 north (near Soda Springs ID) and then east into Wyoming, US 89 north to US 26, ID
31 north (near Swan Valley ID), ID 33 north near Victor ID and back to US 20 and I-15 for the drive back to Pocatello.
Selecting Monday for a scenic drive generally makes sense. Not paying attention to the calendar and selecting Labor Day for a scenic drive in an area where campgrounds abound was not…. Let’s suffice it to say I must have dozed when that was covered in the Rocket Scientist 101 course I took! By early afternoon the “heading for home” traffic was intense. I actually had planned to continue north to Island Park before turning west for the return to Pocatello, but time and stamina got the best of me. As with most scenic drives, many of the crème d’ la crème vistas have no pullout available. Some of the state highways were less travelled and I sorta straddled the edge of the road and got out for a quick picture. One of the prettiest spots was in Wyoming as I was driving northbound along the western side of the Grand Tetons. All in all, a very pleasant day.
For those of you familiar with the Pocatello area, I want to point out I
intentionally “overlooked” a few attractions – the aforementioned Idaho Museum of Natural History, the Idaho Potato Expo in Blackfoot and the Craters of the Moon National Monument. I saved those as well as some waterfalls (better seen in warmer weather) for my next trip through the area to see Jack and Connie. With two full days of sightseeing and a hefty trip to Jack and Connie’s place, the Ram got a good workout. As I said earlier, I hope to get back to southeast Idaho soon and to return regularly.
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