Vacation 2016 - Craters and Falls

We had two stops that we really wanted to make today. We succeeded with both. The first was Craters of the Moon. We walked several short trails along the obvious lava flows. I have done similar walks before. The biggest difference I noticed was that these flows maintained a texture that made it clear that these were indeed flows. The flows I have seen in Oregon were essentially piles of crumbly rock.


After Craters of the Moon, we headed to Twin Falls. We initially stopped by the Visitors Center where we looked at Perrine Bridge and saw a couple of base jumpers make the plunge. We also caught a glimpse of Evel Knievel’s  ramp for his aborted attempt to jump the Snake River.

The bridge was not our primary goal at Twin Falls. We wanted waterfalls. We headed to a waterfall to the West, then Twin Falls. Twin Falls has been modified by Idaho Power, so there is now only one segment to the Falls. This was followed by Shoshone  Falls, another heavily modified waterfall. Fortunately, Idaho Power kept the main Falls intact. We also saw Bridal Veil Falls number I forget. This waterfall with the common name was not in a good location for photography, and we didn’t even try. I guess we will have to compensate by picking up a different Bridal Veil Falls later in this trip.

These two areas of stops took a lot of time, and we were later than we wanted to be when we decided to look for a place to spend the night. As I have already stated, we have concerns about looking for places to stay during this holiday weekend. We decided that it would not be worth it to drive around looking for campsites when it was so late, so we went with one of our contingency plans. We were by Twin Falls, and they have several hotels. This turned out well for us since the first hotel we tried was well-priced with a room available for us.

I should probably point out one final noteworthy detail of today’s activities. We did absolutely no birding. This is why I will not have any checklists for today.