Wednesday, July 18

Wednesday, July 18: Logan, UT to Boise, ID.  289 miles.           

We were up at 7, and off by 8:30 after the usual motel breakfast (coffee, juice, yogurt, waffle (me) and eggs (Joy). 

A Spraying Mantis at Work

Southern Idaho, from the Utah border to about 30 miles west of Twin Falls, is a lush and lovely landscape of rolling hills, small farms, green meadows, giving way to larger spreads with great rotating sprinkler systems (we’ve dubbed them “Spraying Mantises” for their profile: long bodies -- actually multiple thoraxes, sometimes as many as a dozen segments, ending with an uplifted head) tracing great green circles on the land.  But from then on almost to Boise the land is brown and uncultivated. For mile after mile the ridges south of the highway have sprouted dozens of gracefully turning wind turbines, but north of the highway the stubbly grass and sagebrush were black from recent fires which had spread over many square miles. Whether the fires were intentionally set or accidental wasn’t clear.

Footprint of the Spraying Mantis

We stopped to pick up a couple of sandwiches at a huge Oasis truck stop, the Garden of Eden, (in Eden, Idaho, of course), where any traveler’s knickknack you could imagine, from jewelry to camping gear to T-shirts to coffee mugs to condoms to scented fir trees to hang from the rear view mirror was for sale, and you could eat at dining area with fake palm trees and rock walls, indoors. Stairs led down to a lower level (marked “Truckers only”) to an area where truckers could shower, exercise, and nap. Gas was expensive ($3.99 a gallon) but the Prius doesn’t drink much or often.  

Snake River Bridge, Twin Falls, Idaho

We drove on to Twin Falls, where we crossed a high suspension bridge and then took a winding road down to a public park on the banks of the Snake River. Until we started down we hadn’t realized we were in a canyon, with high cliffs on either side. Or that the Perrine Bridge at Twin Falls was a mecca for BASE (Building, Antenna, Span, Earth) jumpers, sport parachutists who like to jump off  not-so-high objects using steerable sport chutes. They jump from the middle of the 486-foot high span and land on the ground below.

After a nice lunch and a walk around the park we stopped at a visitor information center, where parachutists were busy repacking their chutes and comparing notes with each other. One was lying on his back with his leg in an inflatable cast; he had wrapped a riser cord around it in his last jump, badly lacerated it on landing. He had no plans to jump again soon. And we didn’t stay to watch his companions jump either.

We arrived at our motel at the Boise airport at about 4:30, glad to put our feet up. We’ll go out to dinner and get to bed early. Off to Pendleton, Oregon, tomorrow.