Our Own Private Idaho

Day Thirty Three: Vale OR to Craters of the Moon National Monument, ID

The sun blasts over the ridge promptly at 6:30 am. As I am now reluctantly awake, I stroll around the reservoir and find a quiet place to sit and watch the morning shadows move along the hills. Big, yellow fish are jumping, and there are fishermen already poised to catch them. I meander back to the camp and find the Pirate is awake now too. He's been really good, so I make him the treat of egg-in-the-hole for breakfast. If you're unfamiliar with this delicacy, it's a thick cut piece of bread with the center torn out. Add that to a fairly hot pan with butter or olive oil, crack an egg into the hole and cook it for just a sec before flipping it. It should be kind of dark crispy brown on each side, and the egg should be easy. Sooo good.

After breakfast we pack up, have a swim and then hit the road. We hope to do 300 miles today and traverse half of Idaho.

It turns out that the western half of southern Idaho is devoted to big onion farms. Their stalks are dark green and wave in the wind. All of the river valleys are a striking green, as this is the only source of irrigation. The irrigation seems to be done via extensive ditches with hoses attached. We're taking a route that skates the southern border of the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area, a totally hot and arid situation. We're pretty close to Nevada on this route, so it has the particular hot-as-hell desolation of that desert.

By Grandview we're ready for lunch, and the only place in town is a stark cinder block building called Selina's Cafe. It turns out to be a treat, southwestern/Mexican home cookin'. The clientele is mostly hispanic, and I spy on their plates to decide what to order. We end up with our usual favorites: tamales and taco. The Pirate is excited, because they have lengua (cow tongue) tacos. We are not disappointed with our order. In fact, it's so good that I declare that if I had the time and money I would stay in this tumbleweed town until I had eaten everything on the menu.

There is a gain in elevation between Mountain Home and Cary. We ride through beautiful rolling green canyons with enormous gray rocks jutting from the ground. It looks like a rock-worshippers sacred grove. The air cools down a bit, a we can see snow capped mountains in the distance. We can also see signs for Sun Valley, skiers heaven, right? This is by far my favorite ride of the day.

Past Cary we approach Craters of the Moon, a not-so-distantly cooled lava bed that is a hell shade of black. Or, perhaps, it is an ant's eye view of an Oreo cookie crust before it has been patted down. Either way, it's fathomless black crumbles, and we decide to camp in it. It's only $10, and they've been kind enough to scrape the black gravel around in such a way as to create campsites. This must be on the 'must see' list for foreign travelers. We have French-Canadians on one side, Japanese (who actually used a level to get their tent right) on the other. There is a slide show about life on the crater that we're excited to see, but we fall dead asleep at 8:45 and miss the whole thing. I did wake up in the middle of the night to hear a pair of coyotes calling back and forth. I never get tired of hearing them.