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Headed here straight from Bruneau SP. It was a short drive through ag and crag country... maybe 45 mins. Saw some interesting rock formations along highway 30 and impressive irrigation as the spring growth season was in full swing. We stopped in Glenn's Ferry to buy groceries. Very interesting and cute town with heaps of history as this was the crossroads of the Oregon Trail and it's many forks, the river and treacherous crossings, and later, the railroad. They've done a great job with museums, restoration of buildings, and information for the public.
Drove up to the attendant at the front gate and noticed the sign "Campground Full". Ugh... 11 am in the morning! Okay, lesson learned: make reservations way ahead of time for this time of year and the weekend. Stopped and said I noticed the sign, but the attendant jumped right in and said he has one place just for us! We grabbed it for the normal $23.32 (no old fogie discount for weekends). It was one of the sites labeled W on the web, meaning Walk-In (or in this case) "drive up". The don't reserve 3 sites at this campground and leave it for bumblers, like us. BUT, they are going to have ALL sites available for reservations for next year. Is that going to be the way for all state park camp sites next year? I need to call and ask. I don't know, but I think this is a bit much. They've got 82 sites... they could leave 3 or even 5 for drive-ups!
Maybe one of the reasons for the full campsite was that the C... winery had a free golf day. The winery has an adjoining restaurant (which our camp neighbors said was good) and RV park with full hookups for $25 per night. The RV park is just across from the park entrance and looks quite nice and shady as well.
Anyway, we pulled in and right away we noticed the truck camper next to us was one we saw at Bruneau SP. Struck up a conversation and they are from the Deary, ID area.
Sites are all very shady (welcome for our anticipated 90+ day). Lots of elm trees that are right now dropping their seeds for the spring, locust and other trees adding diversity. In fact, as we walked around with the dogs, we noted that there are numerous species. Sites are clean and well kept. Showers are clean and warm. Can't ask for much more.
This park has a very nice admission free education center (name?) with new displays and a more sensitive approach to the Native American's influence and culture. The center overlooks the Oregon Trail crossing of the Snake River used heavily from 1841 to 1848. Thousands of wagons cut the trail over those years and you can see the scar on the opposite hill where the trail lead down to the crossing . One of the park employees indicated that the crossing came ashore just at the end of a road along the edge of the property. We walked down there and tried to imagine how difficult it would have been to cross here: swift, deep, and dangerous. The interpretive center has good information about how the Native Americans helped with guiding the crossing and what the choices immigrants had at this juncture of their travels. Additionally, it had interesting information about the costs of supplies for their travels, cost of the ferry crossings, and lots of quotes from immigrants journals.
But wait! Don't miss this if you have about an hour or so. After you explore the north side of the river where the main park is, you must pick up the booklet called "...." and navigate your way to the south unit of this park. It sits high on the bluff overlooked the three islands and gives you a spectacular perspective of this area. Portions of the Oregon Trail are marked with white posts (and other portions are curiously not). One thing I noticed was the trail could clearly be seen bisecting one of the islands. Two of these islands are State Park Property now and the third is BLM.
Gus Glenn finally built a ferry (1869) located upstream a couple miles and basically ended the use of the crossing. There is so much interesting history here and rather than rewriting what others have written, take some time to search out information on the Oregon Trail, Native American culture, and geology.
We headed out to the Thousand Springs SP. This park has a number of units to entertain you with a variety of landscapes, history and activities: Malad Gorge, Vardis Fisher, Kelton Trail, Earl M. Hardy Box Canyon Springs Nature Preserve, Billingsley Creek, Ritter Island, Crystal Springs and Niagara Springs. One could spend many days just exploring these units. Fortunately, they are all within short distances of each other. Some units are as close as a mile from each other, but navigating the roads (because of the canyons) can take a little extra time. They are scattered among the slash of Interstate 84, fertile farmlands irrigated with spitting sprinklers, dairy farms, irrigation canals, the Snake River and Malad River, canyon fractures in the landscape, and small, friendly towns.
Malad Gorge: This unit is situated adjacent to the interstate. I have driven this section of highway for the last 30 years and not once stopped. It's so easy to swing off the highway and take a break here to look at the canyon, which is very difficult to even get a glimpse of when buzzing by on US I84. There's a foot bridge that takes you right over the Devils Washbowl (a plunge pool for the Malad River) when you can stop, look down and get that dizzying feeling as the bridge flexes some. The canyon at this point is perhaps 150 feet wide and 200 feet deep. As I stood on the bridge a canyon wren gave its distinctive call while swallows or other birds flitted about. Of course all this with the thump of big trucks pounding over the I84 bridge that's 150 feet away. After crossing the footbridge, there is a trail to an overlook. It's quite covered by bird poop and the information signs as old and poop covered so you can't read them. BUT, it is a good overlook even with your hands in your pockets! The trail continues on to introduce you to the craggy landscape. This unit also gives you a nice picnic area and some sort of ORV trail that was closed when we visited. (Find out more.) This may be a great area for mountain bikes. We need to figure out how to carry the bikes on the camper!
Kelton Trail: This is just upstream from the Malad Gorge unit and is an old Oregon Trail (north section) crossing of the Malad River. We stopped here on the way to Lake Walcott SP. We had to do some dead reckoning and serious map interpretation to find the parking lot. We arrived and noted the sign, which had nothing on it. (I will insert a picture here when it's downloaded off the camera.) A small sign to the right and hanging on the fence told us that it was state park land. The road into the parking lot was very rough with potholes and rocks, but hey, what's a big Ford truck for? We were very glad we stopped there as it was at the head of the Malad Gorge, where the river first starts slicing it's way through the basalt formations. Very interesting eroded basalt with holes and dished out pools that was difficult to walk on. It also was a bit treacherous to look down into the very narrow gorge, which in the beginning was perhaps three feet wide. The Oregon trail was marked using white posts, but was not thoroughly identified. It took us some time to figure things out but it was a fun walk. Additionally, the area is trenched with an irrigation canal that adds to navigation issues, but we found the small bridge to get us across the section we were interested in crossing. Of course, the canal made it more difficult to imagine the wagons making their way through these maze of rocks and cracks, but certainly it was a curious mind exercise to think about the daily chore this landscape must have been.
Earl M. Hardy Box Canyon Springs Nature Preserve:
Billingsley Creek: What an interesting unit! You enter this unit from a small parking lot (don't even try to drive a big rig into this lot as my truck camper was almost too big). Immediately you are introduced to the ruins of an old fish farm. Races full of aquatic vegetation, crumbling concrete, old fencing and netting to keep birds out, dangerous holes and the old ruins of Vardis Fisher house who wrote Mountain Man (1965) that was the story line for the movie Jeremiah Johnson. As we entered, a group of men we coming out carrying scuba tanks. They had been to the small Fisher lake taking a certification course. One guy said there were no fish, but in the small stream next to the hatchery, there were many trout. AND some were big! I would suspect they got hit hard by the local kids, but hey, someone needs a challenge. Dangit... I need to pack my fishing stuff. You can put a small boat in here and float down to Billingsly Creek Unit or just past to a State of Idaho WMA where you can easily unload your boat up some steps and a short haul to the parking lot. BTW, the WMA unit and loads of marmots along the road as you enter. We must have seen a dozen. Most were young of the year, but they scampered everywhere.
Ritter Island:
Crystal Springs:
Niagra Springs:
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