Dateline June 12, 2018, Idaho, Twin Falls and Boise
Into Idaho. We crossed into Idaho in the morning and found ourselves in the heart of the potato business, which brought two things to mind. The first was our dear neighbor Lou Steflik, who grew up in Bunnell, Florida, just back of Flagler Beach, and farmed potatoes there, red ones, grown in the ground, which is not the crop most people picture coming out of Florida. The second was John's father, who after the Second World War started a business in the Seattle area supplying restaurants with fresh-cut french fries and other potato products. It was not until the late 1950s that restaurants began using frozen potatoes, and the business shifted from cutting fresh ones to distributing frozen fries; John still remembers the stories of trucks sent down to Idaho to bring the potatoes back.
Twin Falls. We were aiming for Twin Falls and rolled in around noon, with the afternoon free for a round of golf at Canyon Springs. The course was fun in its own right, but the setting was the thing; it sits down in the Snake River Canyon that runs through town.
The Perrine Bridge. Above the course stands the Perrine Bridge, the eighth highest in the country, and famous for one thing in particular: people jump off it. It is one of the few bridges that allow BASE jumping year-round without a permit, BASE being the jumper's word for leaping from a fixed Building, Antenna, Span, or Earth, meaning a cliff, with a parachute or a wingsuit. They come from all over the world to do it here, though we are sorry to report there were no takers the day we looked.
Shoshone Falls. The next morning we drove over to Shoshone Falls, the great prize of Twin Falls, which they call the Niagara of the West. It is nine hundred feet wide and drops two hundred and twelve, one of the largest falls in the country, and we timed it just right; we got there about nine, when the sun was still low enough to throw rainbows across the water.
By ten the sun had climbed too high and the rainbows were gone, but for that hour it was something to behold.
Boise, and the RV at last. From there it was on to Boise and our morning appointment to set the Roadtrek right. We arrived at eight and went down the list. The new refrigerator had come in the evening before, so they pulled the old one and put it in; the house battery trouble, it turned out, had been misdiagnosed all along and simply needed new batteries. Between the batteries, the refrigerator, and the labor, we like to think we kept the place in business for the day. We cannot say enough for Dennis Dillon RV. Repair appointments out here run six and eight weeks out, and getting in on short notice is next to impossible, but they ordered our parts ahead and fit us in right when we were due to be in town. We were fixed and rolling by two in the afternoon, bound for Oregon.
