Southeastern Idaho History

 For a long 4 day weekend this fall, we decided to take a short vacation over to Eastern Idaho.  We rented an old farmhouse on a ranch outside the tiny town of Grace, ID, for our trip.  Three years ago we had passed through the area on our way home and I remember seeing the area was loaded with Oregon Trail history and it would be worth a visit on its own.

Our first stop on our way out, Thursday, was Massacre Rocks State Park.  It's one of those places I had driven by a couple dozen times, but never stopped.  Oregon-California trail passed right through what is now the state park.  It received its name because of the local geology: large volcanic boulders scattered about forced the trail to pass among them.  The early pioneers believed it to be a good location to be ambushed by local Indians.  Thus they named the place Massacre Rocks.  With the exception of a skirmish East of the area in August 1862, these fears never came to life.

We had the park completely to ourselves.  We had a couple hours to have a picnic lunch, do a short hike down to the Snake River, and then we had a quick drive to a location at the far Western edge called Register Rock.

Passing emigrants used this giant boulder (and a couple others nearby) as a place to carve their names and dates they passed through.  It did seem there were more signatures from the 1860's and up until the 1890s.  On another rock, the park staff has a sign explaining an interesting story about a young boy who drew an Indian and a preacher on a rock, then returned years later as an adult.

(Indian Head)

(Preacher)

Another highlight of the trip was visiting the famous geyser in the town of Soda Springs.  The entire area has numerous naturally carbonated water springs (some of them being hot as well).  In 1937 a developer was drilling underground to try and tap into one of these underground pockets to build a hot spring resort.  The developer unintentionally hit a chamber of 70 degree carbonated water that shot 70 feet into the air.  The city of Soda Springs installed a cap, and it is now regulated to erupt every hour, 24/7.  It still shoots 70 feet into the air, and the duration last for quite a few minutes.  It's marketed as the only captive geyser in the world.

Being that the area of Soda Springs has numerous springs, it was known as the "Oregon Trail Oasis" during the Western migration.  The NPS has an excerpt from a diary of a woman known as Sarah Smith who traveled the Oregon Trail.  She wrote "Traveled . . . along the bank of the bear river & are encamped at Soda Springs. This is indeed a curiosity. The water tastes like soda water, especially artificially prepared. The water is bubbling and foaming like boiling water. I drank of it. . . . We find it excellent for baking bread, no preparation of water is necessary. Take it from the fountain & the bread is as light as any prepared with yeast."

We made a stop at one of these springs that early emigrants stopped at, known as Hooper Springs.  A covering is built over the top of the spring and you are able to scoop out some of the carbonated water and drink it.  Amber, Addie, and I all tried drinking it.  I personally did not enjoy it, but maybe had I added some flavoring it would have been better.

Just outside of Soda Springs, on the Western side, is a little section where you can walk the original wagon trail.  I've written on doing this before, for other sections of the Oregon Trail.  But it never gets old being able to immerse yourself in the moment of being in the exact place 170 years later.

A final bit of exploring we did on our trip had to do with some of the settler history along this portion of the Bear River.  The area is in a valley known as the Gem Valley.  Fertile farm fields sit atop layers upon layers of basalt that was laid down during the regions volcanic past.  The bear river turns South after passing by Soda Springs, and heads through the Gem Valley, whereupon it descends rapidly into what is known as Black Canyon Gorge.  Settlers faced a difficult task: How to move water from down inside a gorge to irrigate farm fields up above.  The solution is what is known as the Grace Flume.

A massive underground pipe system was developed and drilled through the solid rock.  At this location, the water comes out of the canyon wall and goes across this arch, before continuing on its journey.  It's part of the Last Chance Canal.  To learn more, visit this link: https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=109914

Finally we made a quick stop downstream by a bridge, just to see this Black Canyon Gorge for ourselves.  You're just driving through open farmland and then all of a sudden you're at a very stunning canyon with the Bear River raging down below.

There's definitely more to see and do here; including a visit to Niter Ice Cave, which is just to the south of the town of Grace.  Overall it's a very peaceful corner of Idaho that was very enjoyable and relaxing to visit.  I'm sure it helped that it was October, as well, but I definitely plan on returning.

Washington Lighthouses

 After 2 years of not getting away on a trip, we finally made plans to road trip over to Washington's Olympic Peninsula.  The ultimate goal was to get to Port Angeles and use it as a base to explore a little bit of the area with the family.  But first we had to get there.  Along the way we planned on visiting with friends, and of course, to visit some new lighthouses and add to our Lighthouse Passport book collection.

After leaving a friend's house near Tri-cities, we took the lesser traveled WA-410 and were treated to a nice peaceful early morning drive, with a gorgeous view of Mt. Rainier.

We continued our drive, stopping when necessary for the kids, with the goal of reaching Hansville, by 3:00.  Hansville is a small town located on the Northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula, jutting into Puget Sound.

This small town is where the headquarters for the United States Lighthouse Society (USLHS) is located.  It's also conveniently right next door to the Point No Point Lighthouse.  The USLHS is the organization working to preserve, protect, and educate the public about all things lighthouse and they manage the passport stamp program.  Amber and I being members, we naturally wanted to stop by for a visit and to receive the official headquarters passport stamp.

Point No Point Lighthouse gets its name from Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, when in 1841, thought the location was a prominent point in Northwest Puget Sound.  After further exploration, however, he realized it was quite small.  The name "Point No Point" stuck.  the US Congress appropriated funds for the lighthouse in 1873, and by early 1880 the lighthouse was operational.  The lighthouse featured a 30 foot tower with a duplex building for the keepers.

Point No Point is the oldest lighthouse in Puget Sound, and it still shines today; although the lamp in the Fresnel lens has been replaced with a modern optic.  Today the USLHS occupies one half of the keeper's duplex, and the other half is used as a vacation rental.

The kids enjoyed the beach for a while, before we got back on the road again.  We made a quick stop to try and get a view of a private lighthouse, Skunk Bay Light, also in Hansville.

Jim Gibbs, a former lighthouse keeper, was able to rescue the lantern from the Smith Island Lighthouse before it fell into the waters of the Strait of Juan De Fuca, and he incorporated it into a private lighthouse he built on his property.  Eventually he registered the beacon as an official aid to navigation with the US Coast Guard.  Today the building is privately owned, but you can get a faint glimpse of it through the dense trees.

We ended out day with a drive across the Hood Canal, and to a quiet vacation rental near Port Hadlock, for the night.  We would be well positioned for our bigger adventures the following morning.  It was in a perfect location: Away from any main road, almost no sounds except the birds and occasional airplane, and a nice view of a small bay where we could watch the tide come and go.

In the morning we were up and made the thirty minute drive North to Port Townsend.  On the far northern tip of the peninsula sits Fort Warden State Park, and on the edge of this park sits Point Wilson Lighthouse.  All ships turning south into Puget Sound must pass by this point, in the channel between Point Wilson and Whidbey Island into what is known as Admiralty Inlet.

The Point got its name when George Vancouver bestowed it in honor of Captain George Wilson.  The 1 1/2 mile sand spit naturally is a hazard to shipping turning south, so Congress appropriated funds and in late 1879 Point Wilson Lighthouse and fog signal went into service.  The original tower was a 46 foot tall wooden tower that was incorporated into the roof of the keeper's dwelling.  Contained in the lantern was a fourth order Fresnel lens with a fixed light.

(Original light built into keeper's dwelling, with newer light in the background)

In 1894, the fixed lens was replaced with a rotating fourth-order Fresnel lens.  Beach erosion continued to threaten the light, so in 1914 the new lighthouse was built farther back.  It was a 49 foot tall concrete tower with an attached fog signal building.  This is the current light that stands today.  The keeper's dwelling and support buildings are still there (keeper's dwelling is a vacation rental) but the tower has been removed from the dwelling.

For the Point Wilson Lighthouse, I was able to arrange for a private tour.  Our docent met us at the lighthouse and shared with us the history of the point, lighthouse, and then we got to go inside and climb the tower.

We found out that the day before, the USLHS that is managing the restoration of Point Wilson, just finished restoring and relit the Fresnel lens.  Once again, it is an active navigation aid.  

After our tour had finished, we made our way to the Port Townsend Ferry Terminal.  I had made round trip reservations for a day trip to the Coupeville landing, on Whidbey Island.  It would be a short 30 minute trip, and then we'd have 4 hours on Whidbey, before returning to Port Townsend.

The plan for the afternoon was to just have a relaxing time exploring Fort Casey State Park, which is located right next to the Coupeville ferry landing.  Fort Casey is mostly a military fortification park, and it also encompasses the Admiralty Head Lighthouse.

The East side of Whidbey Island juts into Admiralty Inlet, so in 1858 the Feds bought some property with plans to construct a lighthouse.  The first lighthouse went into service on January 21, 1861.  It originally had a fixed white light, with a fourth order Fresnel lens.  In 1901 the US military established Fort Casey as one of the many coastal defense forts built in the Puget Sound area.  As a result, the lighthouse was moved a little bit to the North, and the current one that stands was constructed.

It's life was short lived, however.  By 1922 the shipping traffic would stay close to the Western shore, and as a result Admiralty Head Light was deemed unnecessary and was deactivated on July 1, 1922.

The rest of the afternoon we explored the old bunkers, gun emplacements, and abandoned buildings left over from the military days.  After WW2, the forts all along the coast were abandoned as technology had progressed and made them obsolete.  That evening we made it to Port Angeles and the rest of the trip was spent exploring a little bit of Olympic National Park (the less crowded, free areas), taking the kids to a marine center with touch tanks, playing on the beach, exploring some old growth forests, a timber museum, and visiting with friends.

I had wanted to take the family out to Cape Flattery.  It's the most Northwest Point in the lower 48, and after a short hike you can see, in the distance, the Cape Flattery Lighthouse, perched upon Tatoosh Island.  The round trip distance, however, forced us to change plans since our youngest, Carson, was already enduring a lot of carseat time.

Definitely want to take more trips to Western Washington.  There's so much more of the Olympic Coast to explore, more lighthouses, and many more adventures.  I think I need to wait for the kids to get a bit older before we attempt another trip over there, though...

Three Island Crossing State Park

 We met up with my parents for our last camping trip, just as summer was officially ending.  We kept it local, and we met up at Three Island Crossing State Park, in Southern Idaho.  It was mostly a time of relaxing and enjoying family time.  But we did get a chance to see some of the fascinating history of the area.

For those who aren't aware, Three Island Crossing is exactly what it sounds like.  There are three islands, like stepping stones, across the Snake River and it was an important site on the Oregon Trail.  It was at this point that the Oregon Trail split.  A successful river crossing meant a somewhat easier trip across the rest of Idaho.  There was more water, vegetation for livestock, and the chance to stop by Fort Boise.  You just had to successfully ford the river.  If a group didn't want to risk the crossing, the Southern alternative became their route.  This was not the favored option as there was less water and it was known to be the tougher of the two routes.

There is a really good overlook to the South of the campground you can drive to, and get a great birds eye view of the land.  The wagons would start out with the first ford and cross the length of the first island.  You can still see and visualize impressions running across the center of the first island, left by the multitudes of wagons.

The wagons would bypass the third island, cutting directly across the remainder of the Snake River Channel.  Upon reaching the bank their fanned out in a wide arc heading to the North-west.  While this area is farmland now, you can still see evidence of the trail from this vantage point up above.  The immense number of wagons compressed the ground so much and left depressions known as swales.  The darker terrain are these swales.  It does require some imagination and looking for the little details, but as Amber and I have traveled to a lot of these historical sites it does get a bit easier.

As we were leaving the overlook we did stop for a few minutes where the road intersects the Oregon Trail.  Just some simple white markers and swales denote its presence.  We walked along the wagon depressions for a bit, just imagining the hundreds of thousands of people who walked and struggled along this very path for months on end.  Here we are able to cover that same distance in mere hours.  It's very fascinating and humbling to think about.

Return Trip Home from Dinosaur

 When we left Vernal, UT, it was only a 1 hour drive to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area.  I had originally planned on us camping here, but scrapped that so we could stay in Vernal longer.  So instead we would only spend a few hours here.

Our first stop was the dam.  It was completed in late 1962 as part of the Colorado River Storage Project.  The dam provides irrigation, recreation, and electricity production.  They have a small visitor center at the dam and some walk ways visitors can take to get some nice views.

Flaming Gorge got its name in 1869 during Major John Wesley Powell's first expedition.  Three days after leaving Green River, WY, they came into the Uinta Mountains and they described the sun radiating off the colorful canyon walls as flames.  Thus, they named it Flaming Gorge.  As we didn't have much time to explore we only made one more stop in the area.  We continued on to the Red Canyon Overlook & Visitor Center.  The kids had a blast playing with toys, coloring, and we took a short walk in the rain to some overlooks.  The view is amazing.

We continued on as our afternoon plans were to explore Fort Bridger, in Wyoming.  We wanted to take our son to his name sake.

As the name implies, Fort Bridger came into existence because of Jim Bridger, the infamous mountain man and Western explorer.  It all began as a small log trading post that he constructed in 1843 to service emigrant traffic heading West.  Today Fort Bridger State Park has a section of their grounds dedicated to this first trading post with a replica.

The entire fort itself is a treasure trove of history, and as one can imagine with little kids running around we didn't get to experience everything the place had to offer.  But we did our best.  Following the arrival of Mormon settlers in the region, tensions began to mount between Jim Bridger and the locals.  There was a period of a Mormon militia taking control of the fort and Jim fled.  He returned years later and the Mormons had made big improvements to the fort.  Years went on and Jim Bridger finally agreed to sell out to the Mormons.  However that wasn't the end of the conflict.  In 1857 federal troops arrived on order from the U.S. President to enforce federal law upon the Mormons.  More conflict ensued.  The Mormons burned the original fort to prevent its capture.  The U.S. military later rebuilt it and established a presence in the area.  Throughout the Civil War and rest of the 1800s the military occupied the fort until 1890 after the conclusion of the Indian Wars.  From that point different buildings were scrapped and sold off.  Today the Park consists of some original buildings restored and various reconstructions.  There are ongoing archeological projects to excavate some of the original foundations laid by the earliest Mormons as well.

We wandered around a bit more, exploring some of the old barracks, stables, and various old equipment they had.

We ended our day staying the night in a small tiny home we rented for a night near the town of Fort Bridger.  It was a nice quiet place to stay the night.  In the morning we embarked on our last full day on the road, and it would be busy.  The main attraction was Fossil Butte National Monument.  It's a very remote NPS site in the middle of nowhere in South-western Wyoming.

In 1856 Dr. John Evans collected what were probably some of the first fossils found in the region.  He started a trend of other scientists coming out to study the buried creatures, and as the railroads expanded across the West this improved access to the land.  Fossils have been found here and sent all over the country to be only display.  No dinosaur fossils have been found here, however.  It is primarily smaller reptiles and mostly fresh water marine life.

(Fossil Butte)

I think most Evolutionists and Bible believing Christians can agree that the area surrounding Fossil Butte was most definitely a lake of some kind in the past.  Where we would disagree, obviously, is on the timing of sequences.  The mainstream narrative is that the lake, named Fossil Lake, drained and refilled multiple times.  Slowly there were local floods and events that buried some creatures.  Over millions of years this was repeated time and time again.  That is a bunch of bunk. It makes sense the area was a lake in early Biblical times.  When Noah's Flood began the larger animals were trying to escape to higher ground and that is probably why none of their fossils are found here.  Rapid burial occurred and probably millions of these creatures were preserved as a result.  Fossil Lake was teeming with so much life and that is evidenced by the trove of fossils they have on display.  As we wandered through the Visitor Center you can even see examples of fossils and the Park Service is inadvertently hinting at a global catastrophe and rapid burial for some of the examples, which I will point out what I found.

First some of the best fish specimins:

This one directly above, I really like.  How many times are there hundreds of dead fish in just a few square feet and they have been preserved in stone?  Was it just a coincidence that these creatures all died at the exact same time and became fossils?  Next, they had some examples of fish overlapping, including one fish trying to eat another fish.  If a fish slowly dies of natural causes, do you think its final act in life is going to be trying to eat a meal?  Of course not.  This fish was going about its normal business when Noah's Flood buried in the act of eating.

(Overlapping fish fossils)

In the fossil display the Park Service had a section set up discussing evidence of a catastrophe, and I thought it was interesting to see them right over the target but miss it completely as the NPS denies the existence of God.

Finally, just some photos of the other interesting fossils that are on display.

                                                                    (Alligator)

The last thing we did before leaving was take the short scenic drive.  We stopped and had a picnic area completely to ourselves, and then ended up on a ridge enjoying the views and the solitude of this part of Wyoming.

Overall it was a fantastic experience visiting this place.  I get very excited about geology and fossils, and this place has the biggest display of fossils I've seen so far in my life.  Even the bathrooms had display cases of petrified poop contained in them.  I would definitely return someday if we are passing through as there are a couple hiking trails in the Park (including one to the old fossil quarry).  Plus, outside the Park land you can pay a fee with some private outfitters and go fossil digging with them.

We continued on our way home, stopping in Montpelier, ID to do an Oregon Trail Living History experience.  No pictures were allowed, but it was a neat stop.  You step back in time with some dressed up actors and they walk you through preparations and you ride a computer controlled covered wagon and get to feel every rock and bump for a few minutes.  We ended the night camping in Lava Hot Springs, ID.  In the morning we took the kids to the Pocatello zoo before making the final push home.  Overall it was a very fun trip and it was neat to see our kids do and enjoy more during our time on the road.  Until our next adventure...