I woke up in Boise and planned to begin heading east. I did not know where I would spend the night, as I would did not know how far east I could go before I had to turn north to circle back to my plane in Seattle.
My first stop was the Basque Museum and Cultural Center, which offers a history of the Basque people in Spain as well as in the American West. It offers a combination of ethnographic and historical materials, largely established and maintained as a labor of love within the local Basque community. I did not know much about the Basque people, so I learned a lot and enjoyed my visit. I took a few snaps of the city and then headed eastward.
My next stop was Shoshone Ice Caves. I had followed brown National History site signs to get to it, but I encountered a family-run business that offered tickets into the caves and an adjacent museum. I was in Shoshone country here, and while it was not a native reservation, it had the feeling of isolation that one often has on a res. I was the only visitor while I was there, and the proprietor’s son offered me a ticket and a lantern to guide myself deep into the mammoth cave. I decided not to go far into it because I was alone and, if I was injured, I was not sure anyone would notice and get help. The site was littered with abandoned farm equipment, and while the landscape was beautiful in a wild way, it was also very isolated. The museum consisted of a lot of stuffed local animals and some history of people in the area.
Once I left there, I had a decision to make about what to try to see in the remaining 1-2 days I had left in the state. Ideally, I would take in the Craters of the Moon National Monument and press on to Pocatello, where I knew people. However, with time getting short (I had Friday and part of Saturday left for visiting Idaho) and a strong possibility that I would get back to Pocatello, I decided to head north before I reached the Craters of the Moon as I did not have time enough to do them justice that day. I found a place to stay in Hailey for the night, and walked around the town with Tamu taking in the Sawtooth Mountain Range that dominates the skyline. We did not encounter any celebrities, but enjoyed another pristine evening in Idaho.