We landed late on a Friday night in August of 2006, and drove towards Hagerman, Idaho. After a narrow miss with a family of raccoons in the road, we arrived at a cute little hotel, still some way out of town. We settled down for the night, ready for the next day's adventures.
In the morning, we visited Hagerman, taking a self guided auto tour, we stopped by a marsh early in the morning, and watched ducks skim through the tall reeds. We followed a road, viewing boulders from a massive prehistoric flood, crossed a lake with White Pelicans floating on it, and slowly wound up into the hills, to find a portion of the Oregon Trail. It was apparent as a wagon wide ditch that wound its way up beside the road. We walked around on the top of one hill, with interpretive signs, and got stuck with lots of tumbleweed.
We headed back into town, to the museum, a small little building, more fitting to a state, rather than national park. They have a full skeleton of the horse which shares its name with the town and the park. They also have quite a few other fossils, and the ranger there was very friendly and informative. After that we went to eat a good ole country breakfast at a little restaurant there. Then, we went across the street and bought some munchies for the duration of our road trip, and then headed out towards our next destination: City of Rocks.
At this point, we were well ahead of schedule, so we felt obliged to stop at a few detours along the way. One being Malad Gorge, the other being Shoshone falls. Malad gorge was, you guessed it, a gorge. Pretty, deep, with a rushing river in the bottom. Shoshone Falls is a broad falls, like Niagara, but much smaller. The water was low, it being late August, but it was still beautiful, and created 2 rainbows in its mist. Finally, we headed to City of Rocks. This place blows away any of the other places we've been with similar names. These aren't boulders; these are towering spires of rock, a true rock climber's dream. This area also was along a pioneer trail west, and there is a rock near the entrance to the park, where you can still read the names of early settlers who marked the rock with axle grease. There is another, similar park, down the road that is run by the state called Castle Rocks State Park, and while I was interested, it was just starting to rain and it was getting dark, so we opted to head for the camp grounds of Craters of the Moon NP. Along the way, we enjoyed one of the many beautiful sunsets that we saw almost every day of this trip, and puzzled over the strange, disjoint sections of fence, which we finally decided must be to prevent snow from drifting too much across the road. Finally, after nightfall, we entered the park, and pulled into one of the few remaining campsites. We pulled out the blankets, laid back the seats and went to sleep.
