West Yellowstone to Mountain Home
After our exertions in Yellowstone, we wanted a nice relaxing day today. We would find a motel for around 5pm, and relax. Remember that.
We took advantage of the hotel’s breakfast, which turned out to be a good idea — they had make-your-own waffles. You poured a ready-measured cup of batter onto the iron, closed it, then flipped it over, which caused a timer to start. When the timer reached zero, it would beep, and a perfect waffle was ready. Combined with some bagels, we were well fed at breakfast.
Another advantage of the Kelly Inn was the fake bears climbing the exterior.
We had a little trouble finding the road out of West Yellowstone — quite an achievement in a four block town — but once we had, we were on our way out of Montana and into Idaho. We descended a valley onto a plain, and I got the impression that our mountain experiences were behind us until the peaks in Oregon and Washington.
The flat, open space was divided into varying kinds of farm use, breaking up the landscape, but this gradually became scrubby desert as we moved West. We began to see more mountains on the horizon.
We passed through the major city of Idaho Falls at around lunchtime, but after our large breakfast, decided to postpone lunch. This may have contributed to the mess later on.
A sign indicated that we were entering the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, but there was nothing to see but desert and "No Trespassing" signs authorised by the US Department of Energy.
This was "Big Butte County", and this is a picture of "Big Butte". Many jokes were made, none very good.
Eventually we came to Experimental Breeder Reactor One — EBR-I, the first nuclear power station in "the free world". Now out of service, we got to look inside and see the period charm of the instrument panels (which reminded me of the 1960s electrical equipment in our school physics lab), the emergency "scram" button , the core, remote manipulators, the turbine, even fuel rods.
The first run of the generator lit four lightbulbs. These were on display, unlit, while four replicas were lit next to the turbine. Later, the reactor would power the nearby town of Arco. We went on to Arco, and sure enough, atomic power is a big part of its identity. Now hungry, we ate at Pickle’s Place, "Home of the Atomic Burger".
I couldn’t resist the Atomic Burger, while Debbie had a Tijuana Burger. Good people, we both had salad instead of fries. Now it was half past three — but our stomach-assisted body clocks felt it was just after lunchtime. Our five o’clock motel target was going to suffer.
The hillside above Pickle’s Place is covered in big numbers. Our waiter told me that every graduating class paints on their year. I don’t know how long this has gone on, but the smallest number we could see was 22.
We drove on to Craters of the Moon National Monument. This is a vast area of lava deposits from a volcanic eruption only 2,000 years ago. In the visitor centre, a relief map revealed that the plain we had been driving across — the Snake River Plain — is in fact made up of a series of Calderas, and all along we had mountain ranges on all sides.
A seven mile loop road led us around the site, with several stops where you can get out and walk around. We took three of the walking options — one loop around a varied lava field, including chunks of crater wall that had been carried down by the lava flow; one climb to the top of a cone, for views; one walk through another lava field to some lava tube caves.
One cave, the Indian Tunnel, was navigable without a torch. I clambered through and out of a small hole at the end. Debbie exercised discretion and turned back when clambering became necessary. I leapt from rock to rock like a mountain goat, to meet her back at the entrance.
Now it was half past five, and we had missed our self imposed motel target. We agreed to stop at the next place we saw. Carey and Richfield were too small to have motels. Shoshone seemed a bit bigger, but we saw nothing on our way through. We filled up with petrol at a gas station which advertised a pig wrestling event (which we had missed).
Gooding seemed more promising, but a closer look at the most promising looking of its three motels revealed signs of dinginess, and perhaps with some amount of hubris, we decided we could do better. We were near the Interstate, so we set off South towards it.
The junction had nothing, so we headed East (East! Us!) to Twin Falls. Twin Falls was quite a way out of our way, but it’s so big it was bound to be able to accommodate us. What’s more, this is where Evel Knievel tried and failed to leap the Snake River Canyon on a rocket powered motorbike. Our road crossed the canyon, and it would have been a hell of a jump. Hubris kicked in again at the Twin Falls Motel 6, and we decided we could do better. To our surprise, the Shola Inn had no rooms. At the Comfort Inn, a friendly lady told us that no, they had no rooms, and that she’d be surprised if there were any in Twin Falls at all. She suggested we try Shoshone, the place with the pig wrestling.
We returned to the Interstate. We didn’t want to go any further East, so we got back on the Interstate, and went back West, into the glare of the setting sun — which shortly decayed into a beautiful sunset. We passed a few potential offramp motels, not wanting to waste valuable time on places which may well be full from whatever event had flooded Twin Falls with visitors. It was about half past nine — four and a half hours after our target — when we finally came off the Interstate in Mountain Home, where the Sleep Inn was able to accommodate us in a very nice room. That said, apparently they were filling up fast. Twin Falls is apparently "always full", and you "have to make reservations in Idaho". Idaho’s hospitality entrepreneurs clearly need to learn something about how to respond to high demand!
We were too tired for a sit down meal. What we really wanted was a Taco Bell ten taco combo to go, but a quick cruise up and down Mountain Home’s main drag didn’t reveal one. Instead we went to Jack-in-the-Box, where I had a Big Jack burger, and Debbie had a Jack’s Spicy Chicken. Jack-in-the-Box revealed itself to be a maker of very good burgers indeed, and the fries, complete with potato skin, were excellent too. I would go back.
We ate in our room, where my eyes kept closing involuntarily while writing the day’s diary. I postponed it until the morning, which is why I’ve been able to drone on in even more tedious detail than usual.