Fun things to do in Idaho

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This is really just a gas station and country store, but their claim to fame is that this is the "Home of the World Famous Square Ice Cream Cone." On their wall they post statistics for ice cream cones sold per weekend, and they claim they happily served 9,841 cones during Memorial Day Weekend, 19,043 cones over the 4th of July, and 9723 cones during Labor Day. Assuming the holiday weekend is three days and they are open 12 hours a day, they would have averaged over 500 ice cream cones sold each hour!

They have gas, restrooms, soft drinks, country crafts and gifts, and more crammed into this store that is much more modern than you'd expect.

Open daily all year.

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Scenic Route 31 is an alternate route between Idaho Falls and Jackson, WY, and is known as the Teton Scenic Byway. The scenic route actually runs just 20 miles or so between Swan Valley and Victor, ID. In the winter Route 31 might be open while much steeper Route 21 over Teton Pass could be restricted to vehicles with chains or even closed. The route passes though Targhee National Forest and its wonderful pine forests.

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Interstate 15 passes a lot of farms in Idaho. I saw a lot of cows and horses, but few other animals. Most crops seemed to be the straw that was stored in the numerous barns, many of which were buried in earth.

Southern Idaho's farming was largly influenced by the Mormon settlers who brought both irrigation and dry farming techniques to the region. Today agriculture is estimated to provide 100,000 jobs and produce well over 4 trillion dollars in sales, mostly livestock and dairy products. As you can imagine potatoes are a major crop in the state, but they lag behind Idaho's top crop, barley.

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Indian Rocks State Park is an odd park that runs along both sides of Interstate highway 15 for several miles in southern Idaho. From the highway the park appears to be miles of rock piled up in the shape of a military fortress in the center of the valley. Later you might pull off at a rest area and realize these rocks are ancient volcanic formations.

The entrance to the park is at its southern edge.

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The Snake River is a major tributary of the Columbia River that run 1,040 miles from the continental divide in Yellowstone National Park, and is the 12th largest river in the US in terms of water volume. It flows through Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park and Jackson, before entering Idaho at the Palisades Reservoir. In Idaho Falls and the surrounding region the Snake River runs through the Snake River Plains and much of the water is used for irrigation. Farther downstream the river flows into Hell's Canyon and is slowed by three dams.

The Snake River was once known as the Lewis River because the Lewis and Clark expedition explored the area in the very early 1800s. It was also explored by John C. Frémont in 1832 and Benjamin Bonneville in 1833-1834 (hence local names like Bonneville County). Even better, the Oregon Trail follows the Snake River for much of its distance.

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The Lolo Pass area runs roughly from Missoula Montana to Lewiston, Idaho, following Highway US 12. It is without doubt, THE best motorcycle road in the US, especially if you run it from East to West, which is an entirely downhill run. We're talking about a 170+ mile run of easy left and right turns around the Lochsa (pronounced Lock-saw) River. Many opportunities to stop at Natural Interpretive and Historical Sites

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Walking in the rocks got me hungry and I drove down to Almo, before resuming my little hikes. For a European, it is quite an exotic place. A few wooden houses, horses in the gardens, lots of broken cars, bikes, agricultural tools, a little church, a football ground, and . . . . . the Outpost, where I even met “real cowboys” (haha, you can laugh, but I liked it a lot!). hitch poles, saddles outside, but now customers arrive by car. . . .
Cowboys, having lunch and beer in this typical “outpost”, with kitch decoration inside, (three first pictures), exotic to me! And a wonderful steak (rare, of course) and beer for me (Lunch for 20 US$); I looked around but there were no poker tables. . . . On the last picture, one of the gardens in this village; to me there is something charming.
Back to the rocks and then on the road to Utah, a few kilometers (oops, miles) away!

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Elephant Rock, Twin Sisters, Bread Loaves Group, Reassure Rock, and lots of other evocative names for some spectacular formations here! To me the most evocative is for the whole area: City of rocks. The granite here has been weathered and washed by humid climate, the fractures and cooling joints doing the rest: all sorts of shapes strange forms in the landscape, a bit like ruins sometimes.
It was on the path I decided to follow to go to Utah, so I spent half a day walking and looking around.
This place is famous among rock climbers, with its vertical walls, high fractures, smooth surfaces, but it is not for me: people drive here, find a parking-camping place, jump out of their cars and ten minutes later they are climbing. . . . . doing as much as possible, then hop on top of the rocks, go down, try another one. . . . . I am not adept of climbing and the climbers I know walk a few hours before getting to their spots. . . . . Well, there are camp places “on the spot”, an office to register in Almo, little village nearby, and other camping facilities. . . . .
I was happy walking there, reading some of the explanation boards on track sides, looking at the landscape, learning a bit about historical sites here. This place was a camp place on the California trail (1843-1869), and thousands of migrants traveled here across Pinnacle Pass, near the Twin Sisters rocks.