When I last left you, Isy and I had stopped to take pictures of the Idaho state line & we were then headed into the night.

Cutting southwest into the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, we passed cheap and secluded campgrounds, except that they were guarded with 3 feet of snow here at 7500ft. Going into this trip I was amazed at how many Idaho and Wyoming roads were still closed or questionable at the end of April, but I was clearly seeing why.

Even though we weren't planning on camping in this national forest, we were still starting to have doubts about camping tonight, especially after last night's chilly adventure.

The mountain pass was dark and devoid of settlements until we popped out of the Big Hole Mountains onto a curving road through farm fields into the Swan Valley.

Once the road straightened out, I could see an abandoned structure of some sort way ahead, right at an upcoming bend in the road. With all the time in the world to make up my mind, I couldn't help but stop at what I'd later learn was a schoolhouse.

Standing on the cold, desolate road, the wind was doing me no favours in terms of camping tonight. Isy increased her concerns about our plan & I wasn't working all that hard to convince her otherwise. It would be nice to save another fistful of cash by sleeping outside, but as always, I was struggling with the allure of a nice motel room, especially after all the cool motel options we had seen back in Lander and Laramie.

I kept with the plan all the way to our campground in Heise, but the car's thermometer was now down into the low 40's (~5°C). With how I was planning on riding more skateparks tomorrow and the next day, plus maybe a sporting event, I decided that maybe it was wise to placate the missus with sleeping inside tonight. Plus it's not like Isy stays at the Days Inn anyway, so we should be able to find some "Motel 5" or "Dan's Motel" out here for $59/night.

We pulled into Ririe and even though I grew distracted with making jokes about being "in Ririe", we eventually figured out the town was too small for a motel.

Since we were heading south to Idaho Falls tomorrow, I figured we should head north right now to mix things up. Unfortunately we didn't see any towns or motels until finally we saw the big lights of Rexburg up ahead. I had heard of Rexburg before, but that was about it.

Well, Rexburg is a funny place and now at least I have a rebuttal when my friend Arntzville says that Las Cruces New Mexico is his least favourite town. First off, we exhausted every motel in my GPS and they were all chains. There seemed to be one non-chain option, but driving all over town, we finally found the 2-story motel converted to student housing. Meanwhile, there weren't any cool neon or oversized signs like everyone else out west. And why wasn't I seeing any bars or historic buildings?

So we grabbed a room at the Super 8. It was cheap and located downtown, which I appreciated.

It turns out that 95% of Rexburg's population are members of the Church of Latter Day Saints. I guess the prevalence of religion explains the absence of bars?

It wasn't just that though. The main university, Brigham Young-Idaho, was inundated with those plain, 1960s, square and bland educational buildings. All of the homes around were either unremarkable or brand new builds. The university had nothing to ride. The county itself only has 2 buildings on the National Register of Historic Buildings. All of the fast food restaurants seemed to be in brand new versions of their buildings and everything else seemed to be in a stucco strip mall.

Now it hurts my heart when people call Windsor "the armpit of Ontario", so I like finding the good in cities but Rexburg just wasn't for me. I suppose that I liked that they haven't demolished their old courthouse, which seems to happen more in Idaho than other states.

Packing up the next morning, things improved quickly. I suggested the local "Maverik" gas station for breakfast since it looked like one of those fancy, new age gas stations with a 1000 fresh food items. Isy enjoyed this breakfast to the point that she started carrying on about Maveriks like people do with Wawas or Sheetz. This made me laugh at the thought of her bringing up obscure-ass Maverik in some upcoming, heated Wawa vs Sheetz discussion, lol.

Next up, we headed back down to the tiny village of Heise to visit their hot springs resort. For $10, we had ourselves another fine 100-degree soak on this cold morning.

Going into this trip, when Isy asked if we could visit any hot springs, I told her I looked and sadly it seemed like there weren't any on our way.

(There were so many hot springs on our way.)

I amused myself with surprising her on back to back mornings.

From the hot springs, we drove a half-hour over to Idaho Falls, the 2nd largest city in Idaho (after Boise/Nampa).

Racing into the Idaho Falls skatepark and growing so excited with the flow and ramps, I got a bit out of line trying a trick that I frequently under-rotate. Crack! The familiar noise of spokes breaking erupted from my front wheel. Going into this trip I already had 3-4 broken spokes and now I was up to 5 or 6.

Donnie would later make a good point about how he knows I hate fixing my bike, but that maybe I should consider it before these trips. If I'm going to grow so constantly dejected because of mediocre Newfoundland skateparks, then why am I allowing my bike a chance to derail good times in Idaho?

Anyway, I was now left unable to barspin or rotate much of anything. Funny thing though, some scooter kid still came up to after 30 minutes and told me that "I'm better at riding a bike than I look." Hahaha. Showed him!

As it seems like every park out west has a cradle, I was excited to finally go more upside down than the last time I rode one in 2006.

The only problem was all of the things that gave me excuses. It was hard to get a lot of speed and then carve opposite in order to carve my natural clockwise motion in the cradle. And my front wheel still wasn't inspiring the most confidence as it wobbled.

I gave it a few attempts, but once I went upside down enough that my front wheel lost contact with the surface and suddenly dropped - scaring the daylights out of me - I had my fill of cradles for a while.

(One day I'm going to go really upside down in one though. Mark my words!)

After Idaho Falls, we stayed out of mountainous central Idaho and instead travelled over the Snake River Plain where you find the majority of Idahoans. More specifically, you find the majority of Idahoans in the southern half of this area with its fine agricultural land, while the northern half is mostly old lava fields and basaltic plains.

We were in the northern half. We had left farmland and entered into arid country where the only interruption of the horizon was three separate buttes. The above is Middle Butte, formed when rapidly-cooled lava hardened below the surface was then pushed up. East Butte and Big Southern Butte vary in that they were formed when lava was pushed up through a fissure and cooled on the surface.

As a man who loved the buttes of West Texas, I was enjoying this Idaho drive along US-20.

After an hour of driving we'd only seen the village of Butte City and then finally, the seat of Butte County in Arco.

Arco was one of those towns out in the middle of the desert that by definition of a desolate desert town, must be either delightful, scary or corny. Within the first few blocks, I wrote Arco off as corny upon seeing a faux submarine sail marked with the number 666.

As it turns out, the submarine sail is the actual sail from the nuclear-powered USS-Hawkbill - known as "The Devil Boat" because of its hull number 666. The reason it's here in Arco Idaho is because this was the first city in the world to have their electricity produced entirely by nuclear power. The town displays this fact with an awesome sign on their town hall.

Arco showed me like I showed that Idaho Falls scooter kid!

Another interesting Arco sight is the year number of every graduating class over the last 98 years, painted by the students on the hill above town.

Every year is up there, going back to 1920.

Clearly if I was missing stuff like Arco's awesome town hall, that submarine, and who knows what else, than we must be travelling too fast or I was being too crabby.

Speeding up to 65 mph as we left town, I braked right back down at the sight of this abandoned house. We needed to slow down and explore more, especially since we weren't going any further than Boise tonight.

The inside was a strange mish-mash of building materials. I wish I could tell you more about this place, but even the "You're from Arco, Idaho? Where in the world is Arco, Idaho?" facebook group came up empty over their 250 photos.

Looking up the second floor.

While planning this trip, I really wanted to drive one of the scenic loops through the mountains here, but there was just too much uncertainty with the snow.

This would have been especially true if I realized Idaho's intense highpoint is only 50 minutes north of Arco. Although I'm not capable of climbing Borah Peak in April, it would have still been fun to at least hike the first hour of the trail.

Regardless, I liked Arco in hindsight and those buttes and the desolation were great.

Next up was the Craters of the Moon National Monument, which one of my Washington State colleagues recommended back at the conference, but I remained skeptical. Isy and I both agreed though, this place was really otherworldly and worthwhile.

This area is underlain by the Great Rift, a series of deep cracks producing weaknesses in the Earth's crust from here southwest through the landscape down to the Snake River. Between 2000 and 15000 years ago, lava erupted through these cracks 60 different times and formed a lava field that today covers 618 mi² (1600 km²) - or about half the size of Rhode Island. It's quite impressive in satellite views and I had no idea it existed prior to this trip.

We went for a spin through some of the roads, lamenting that it was too early to stay at the campground here. We also skipped doing any of the trails because we figured we could see the lava fields from the car, but looking online, it looks like there's greater landscapes and caves to explore by foot.

Continuing along, I pulled the car over on busy US-26 after noticing unfamiliar black and yellow birds alongside in the reeds. In the gaps between speeding trucks and RVs, I swung the door open to have a look.

Yellow-headed Blackbirds!

I definitely haven't seen one of these before, although their breeding and migration ranges stretch near Michigan & Ontario's Essex County.

Further along, as we started to pass more farmland, we passed something I hadn't seen in a long time - an abandoned grain elevator. Not spending too much time in Alberta or Saskatchewan these days, I was excited by the rare opportunity to finally check one of these out.

The nearby, tiny village of 26 people seemed pretty sleepy too, so I figured I'd park the car and go have a look.

Grain elevators are often quickly torn down because of their hazardous nature. You have a structure that's a sentinel to every teenager within a 20-km radius, and then the structure itself is full of drops without handrails, floor holes and vertical stairs.

It's not exactly the best place for the local teens to be drinking White Claws and Coors Light.

I have no recollection of the other towns and villages on this stretch & I can say that I wouldn't have noticed or remembered Hill City if it weren't for this grain elevator.

Which is sad because Hill City wasn't always this much of a footnote. Reading the account of a woman who moved to Hill City in 1931, there were 72 families living here, with a hotel, drug store, mercantile, post office, dance hall, larger hotel, soda parlour, card room, gas station & barber shop.

The reason these businesses existed and why Hill City prospered was the sheep. Basque herders would winter their sheep in the gentler low country, then bring them away from the heat into high country foothills. Hill City was the midpoint of these two places and also home to plenty of wheat which farmers were happy to sell off to feed the sheep.

Hill City was such an ideal location that it sent out more sheep to the midwest and east coast than anywhere else in America. The branch line of the Oregon Short Line Railway from Shoshone to Hill City had only 1 passenger car, but 4 sheep cars.

In a place home to so many sheep, its impressive there was still enough wheat and grain to need two elevators (another elevator still stands in Hill City).

Eventually they made more maneuverable trucks & roads were improved. Trucks could now go to the actual ranches instead of needing a central town to act as a pseudo stock yard.

The buildings of Hill City would burn down or be taken down over the coming decades, until only the post office/store and a small building next to it remain today. The old store was turned into a saloon through a Herculean effort in 2012, but sadly it looks like it has since closed again.

We continued west, through a golden valley of farm fields, with hills that marked the start of the Sawtooth Mountains to our north.

For someone who always had to qualify that he hadn't seen much of Idaho because he'd only cut across the panhandle and briefly stopped at Coeur d'Alene Lake, I sure was fixing that today.

Eventually we arrived in Boise right around sundown. I had us booked into a room at the ol' Cabana Inn. And would you look at that, they have colour TV!

Love a fine motel with exposed cinder block.

I booked this room because I was excited to explore Boise. This was all new territory to me & I figured the state capital of a place like Idaho would have to be awesome.

As it turns out, it was just sort of fine. We had a pleasant walk downtown, our waitress was really nice at the new age restaurant and the food was fine. I can't really complain about anything, but my socks weren't knocked off either. I found it to be like Lansing or Kitchener, where it's acceptable and decent.

Although I really should give Boise more credit because of their stupidly good skatepark.

I guess if we're including this magical playground, then maybe I really like Boise? Because I would love to come back here when there isn't yet another broken spoke in my front wheel, haha.

We grabbed some bagels and good coffee at Blue Sky Bagels, appreciating the fine sandstone Belgravia Apartments next door, before heading on our way northwest out of Boise.

Continue northwest.