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We left Wells, Nevada, and drove to City of Rocks National Reserve near Almo, Idaho. On the way out of town we stopped and had a sampler of beer at Trail Creek Brewing. We got to City of Rocks just as it began to rain. It has rained every day since we left Orinda. We scored the best spot in the park. It was one of 5 RV spaces and it was at the top of a cliff by ourselves.
The next morning we went to the visitors center and bought a map of the trails. We dove to an overlook. It started to rain with hail, so we had lunch back in the trailer. After lunch we did a short hike to Window Arch, walked a trail around Bath Rock and drove down to see Finger Rock, Bread Loaves, and drank water out of a well pump from an underground spring.
The next day we walked around Elephant Rock and observed some rock climbers. City of Rocks is one of the top technical rock climbing places in the U.S. (Click on the picture to enlarge it so you can see the climbers at the top of the rock -- you can enlarge all of the pictures this way -- then hit your browser's back button to return to the blog). City of Rocks was also on the California Trail which pioneers used to emigrate to the west coast in the mid 1850's. We drove through Pinnacle Pass (a narrow pass that was just wide enough for wagons to go through). We drove as far as Twin Sisters (one rock was 2.5 billion years old and the other was 25 million years old). We stopped at Register Rock and Camp Rock where emigrants on the California Trail would sign their names using axle grease from their wagons. We hiked Flaming Rock trail (or so we thought). We ended up at Bath Rock and had to walk back down the road to the car.
The next day we left City of Rocks and drove to Shoshone Falls on the Snake River, known as the Niagara of the West. It is 212 feet high, 50 feet higher than Niagara Falls. Not far from there is the place where Evel Knievel attempted his daredevil jump over the Snake River Canyon in 1974. We also went to Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument which has the worlds richest known fossil deposits from the late Pliocene Epoch, including the Hagerman Horse, a zebra-like creature and Idaho's state fossil. In the same area we saw ruts of the Oregon Trail which ran through here. Then we saw the Thousand Springs Reserve where waterfalls spring from canyon walls via aquifers along the Snake River.
