Completing the western swing

City of Rocks, a popular stop on the pioneer California Trail in southern Idaho.

Our route to Buena Vista, Colorado and Phase II of our summer travels took us through several reservoirs and unique rock formations in Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado.

Boise

We really like Boise. It’s a good size, seems hip, has lots of potatoes (Dave’s favorite vegetable) and is in a beautiful part of the country. Unfortunately, a lot of other people have discovered this gem as well. Case in point: our hard-luck neighbors at the RV Park were from Paradise, CA. They lost their home in the wildfire last year and are building in Boise. Roughly 25% of new residents are coming from California.

The Boise Hawks Class A minor league baseball game was much better played than the last game we witnessed in Washington's Tri-Cities. Plus, we got to watch a mom and dad Osprey periodically swoop down from their huge nest on a platform atop a light pole in right-center field. Maybe they should think about renaming the team?

We spent most of the next day on a 20+ mile bike ride on the beautiful greenbelt trail along the Boise River. Stops along the way included a touching Anne Frank exhibit, the state history museum, and the state capitol.

 

It’s hard to see, but there’s an Osprey nest at the top of this pole, and occasionally the mom or dad would swoop down over the field to get a closer look at the game. Note the team logo on the fence billboard in the bottom right of the photo.

The Boise Hawks game garnered us another mascot photo (with Humphrey the Hawk), as well as a potato race (below).

 

From Boise's Anne Frank human rights memorial park. This makes us want to cry. Never forget.

Betsy was intrigued by this panel at the Idaho history museum. Everywhere we go there seems to be a connection to the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Idaho is no exception. Now we know that's what brought Weyerhauser to Idaho. That was an influential fair indeed.

When in Idaho…

 

The real reason Lewis and Clark didn’t get lost on their journey through Idaho.

City of rocks

This National Historic Reserve is in a remote part of Idaho just north of the Utah border and was a popular stop for the emigrants on the California Trail not long after it parted ways with its better-known cousin, the Oregon Trail. These stops remind me of our 2013 travels where we traveled a good part of these emigrant trails and realizing that these central states were first "rollover country" before they became "flyover country."

There are only two units in the National Park Service with the Reserve designation (the other is Ebey’s Landing on Whidbey Island in Washington) and we have now been to both of them on this trip.

In the evenings we drove the park road to the Twin Sisters feature, and on our only day there Dave hiked and climbed one of the big rocks while I cycled almost straight uphill at 7,000 feet. Not my favorite thing, but the downhill trip home was fantastic.

On the bike trail I surprised a hawk, who swooped ahead of me with a snake in its talons. You don’t see that every day.

 

Dave worked hard to lift the top of this Window Arch at City of Rocks.

Two bike trails: the civilized one in Boise (above), and the gnarlier one Betsy took in City of Rocks (shown below, near where she surprised a hawk with a snake in its talons).

 

Skirting the reservoirs

From City of Rocks National Reserve we drove about 300 miles east to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, which straddles the Utah/Wyoming border. To get to our campground on the lake we had to drive out of Utah into Wyoming and then back into Utah. 

{Note to readers: Flaming Gorge is administered by the National Forest Service so we didn't get to check anything off of our NPS list by stopping here. Darn.}

We skirted past all the boats and pool floats in our campground and instead drove a less-busy geology loop, checked out the visitor center, and ascended a fire tower. 

We ventured off the canyon geology loop road to catch a 360-degree view of the Uinta Mountains and surrounding forest from a fire lookout tower built in 1937. The tower was the first in the state to include living quarters for a resident fire lookout at the top of the tower, and it's now the last of that type standing in Utah. Apparently they used carrier pigeons to send messages to the lookout so a regional college is spearheading a project with the Forest Service to demonstrate how that was done. When it's up and running pigeons will carry messages from the visitor center 12 miles (25 by car) to the tower. 

This fire tower in the Flaming Gorge area was built in 1937, the first in the state with this design, and now the last one standing in Utah. Below you can see our view from the top.

 

The view outside the visitor center was pretty spectacular. Flaming Gorge got its name in 1869 when John Wesley Powell rounded the corner on his boat in the Green River and saw these spectacular red cliffs.

At the Flaming Gorge visitor center, we watched a hysterical 1964 propaganda film from the Bureau of Reclamation, featuring a Daggett County cowboy who seemed ecstatic about the huge project damming up the Green River. It brought back memories of the early days of color television. Dave described it as a cross between “Bonanza” and “Lassie.”

We would have preferred to photograph one of these animals hanging off a steep mountain incline but, alas, it was just browsing along the road near the visitor center.

After stops at two state parks in Colorado (both on reservoirs) we finally made it to our adopted second home of Buena Vista, Colorado where the trailer is now in storage and we are en route to Wisconsin.

We're not huge lake fans, but found ourselves staying at reservoirs the last three nights on the road. These last two (above and below) were in Colorado.

We'll leave you with a Utah Flaming Gorge flaming sunset.

Phase II of our summer trip (to Wisconsin, Chicago, and back home) has begun! We'll catch you up down the road.