Down the Snake River--Twin Falls 7/21/2018

Shoshone Falls

Twin Falls, ID is a smallish community in southern Idaho, a gateway to the Snake River Canyon, which lies to the north. The drive from Hells Canyon took us back along Route 71, for us, that notorious hairpin turn on switchbacks that drop off to steep cliffs. We found that driving it at the beginning of a multi-hour drive, rather than at the end, made it much easier to traverse. The scenery was just as spectacular going as it was coming. On the way down, we did pass a short stretch of road that was covered in black blobs. I thought at first they might be rocks, but then I noted that they were moving! They must have been mormon crickets. This is a picture from the web, but it shows the distribution of the crickets on the road.

On the way through Cambridge, ID, population 316, (not to be at all confused with Cambridge, MA), we passed this little gem:
Wouldn't you love to stay here? No phones in the room, or cell service, but you can use the pay phone (maybe) out front. One thing we came to have some trepidation about were the many "Open Range" signs along back roads. Where there are "open range" laws, people wanting to keep animals off their property must erect a legal fence to keep animals out. So cattle will roam wherever they wish in "open range" country. There's nothing quite like driving your RV pulling a car around a narrow hairpin turn down a mountain to find cattle in the road. Surprise!!

One odd thing about where we were staying for the last several days was the time zone issue. Our campground was on the Oregon side of the Snake River, in the Pacific Time zone. Drive across the bridge, and you are in Mountain time. Without a cellular network, our phones always read Mountain time, the last signal they had before dropping off the network. When we left the campground to come south, and we finally had a signal, our phones added an hour. What? Where did that hour go??

After a few hours, we finally got back to I84, the first time we had been on the Interstate in weeks. Our stop was in Twin Falls at a campground owned by a former HP engineer and his wife. He suggested we see Shoshone Falls (only 10 minutes away) in the evening as the sun was setting, so we did. Here are some pictures, most taken by Ray: https://photos.app.goo.gl/UtvUDAk3YiNdddeD7