2 June – Silver River to Jackson

We woke to another stunning day.  Our campsite was under ponderosa pines with a snow capped peak just visible over the hills.

We drove the short distance into Ketchum. Ketchum is right next door to Sun Valley, one of the US’ best ski resorts and according to our guide book, “the luxury homes of the rich and famous can be seen from the road”. Not wrong!. The houses were not only huge, but amazingly maintained. There was lots of roadside watering going on and the lawns were like putting greens.

The River Run ski resort had  the ski lift going right off the main street. The town was really pretty too. There were two golf courses that double as cross country ski runs in winter. As we drove out of town we saw a luxury car dealer and the airport had several private jets on the tarmac.

In a small town called Bellevue, we passed the Silver Dragon Chinese Restaurant and Mixed Martial Arts Club. Do they feed you then beat you up? Or is the mixed martial arts what happens after a few rice wines? There were lots of irrigation canals along the roadside.

We diverted about 20 miles to see the Shoshone Ice Cave. It was really worth the drive. The cave is 20,000 years old and is in a lava tube, and was used for ice mining in the 1800s to provide ice to the nearby towns.  The cave was completely filled with ice until the 1930’s when the entrance was dynamited to make it more easily accessible to tourists. From then, the ice melted because the conditions that created the ice had changed and eventually the ice disappeared. An enterprising local chap bought the land from the government and restored the cave by bricking the entrance back up to its original dimensions, recreating the right airflow conditions for the ice to form again. Basically the airflow is strong enough to combine with moisture in the cave and drop the temperature to 29 degrees F (below freezing). The water in the cave then freezes up. It was really interesting. 

There was a skeleton of a grizzly bear that had been trapped in the cave – it was carbon dated at 10,000 yrs.

On the way out, the guide pointed out a ghostly face in the rock at the entrance. They call him the gate keeper.

We then went on to the Craters of the Moon National Park. This is a giant lava field from eruptions as recently as 2000 years ago. We saw mini volcano cones, lava flows and blocks of all different sorts and lava tube caves. 

We went into Indian Cave, which is the only well lit one (it has a number of cave ins that let the light in). Because we had just been in the Shoshone Cave, we had to change clothes and wear sneakers instead of hiking boots as we were not allowed to bring anything into the caves that might have been contaminated. They are trying to stop the spread of some bat disease. So we didn’t have our sturdy hiking boots which would have been ideal for the rough terrain. 

The cave was really good – we hiked the whole thing and ended up crawling out of the end of a narrow tube to the surface (which tested Ros’ claustrophobia).

Finally on the road again. Idaho is pretty boring! Flat. Atomic testing was done out here, but that’s about it! Idaho Falls was a bit of a backwater. There was a sign on the highway saying “Tourists! Don’t laugh at the locals.”

We continued on over the Wyoming border, over the Teton Pass – the view from the top was just awesome – and down into Jackson. 

Jackson is at the bottom of the Grand Teton National Park and not far from Yellow Stone. We parked up and scootered into town for some sushi. On the way back we stopped off at the night rodeo, there were little kids – maybe 8 years old – riding baby bulls.