At Hwy 89 in St. Charles we had a treat. There were some cowboys herding a big herd of cattle down the street - oncoming!! We stopped and they came by us just “mooing” - some on one side, some on the other. HA - some cowboys, the one on the horse had on a baseball cap, and the ones with the cowboy hats were riding a 4-wheeler! FUNNY!
When the cows got by, we turned right and took Hwy 89 north to Montpelier, then Hwy 30 west through the small towns of Georgetown, Soda Springs, and Lava Hot Springs. We hit I-15 north to Pocatello, then I-86 west. We went through some big farm country - flat land, potato and wheat fields for miles. This whole section of I-86 runs in the Snake River Valley and parallels the river for the most part. There were several places where we were riding along right beside the river.
Of Oregon Trail significance, the emigrants traveled this same Snake River Valley. One historical site we stopped at today is Massacre Rock State Park. It is right off the interstate and overlooks the Snake River. For three days in August of 1862, a wagon train of emigrants had skirmishes with a band of Shoshone Indians. The emigrants were outnumbered and over the three days, 10 of them were killed. Not necessarily a massacre as the name of the place implies, but still, one of the few times on the Oregon Trail that there was any real Indian trouble
A few miles past Massacre Rock I-86 merges with I-84 and that took us to the exit for Rupert, ID and Lake Walcott State Park. This state park is 11 miles northeast of Rupert and located in the Minidoka National Wildlife Refuge.
On Saturday we went riding and were hoping for some good auto-touring around the area of the lake, but we were disappointed. In fact, this is one of the very few NWR’s we’ve been to that has no auto-tour. According to the NWR map, there are a couple of roads, but we rode one of them about 2 miles and it was a very narrow, rough pig trail through the sage desert scrub and big lava rocks in the track and didn’t get near the water, nor did we see anything interesting.
We did make a drive to the other side of the river and it was very interesting - lots of big farm lands. You can tell this is great country for root crops -- huge fields of potatoes, onions, and radishes. Lots and lots of irrigation too - the Snake River supplies lots of water.
We also took a ride back out the road towards Rupert - we had seen a couple of mares with new born colts that we wanted to get a closer look at. We pulled into a side road right by the pasture where one of them was - what a cutie! And really a new born - no more that a couple of days old. It still had a stub of the umbilical cord. It was curious about us - came right over to the fence to sniff my hand. Guess the smell wasn’t too repugnant - it didn’t run off.
After church today in Rupert we had a relaxing afternoon - travel day again tomorrow.
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