A little over a hundred miles from Atomic City - as you head first west and then south - is a small town of about 3000 people, called Soda Springs.
I had committed to buy a couple of things that I found on an online classifieds site, and those things were located in Soda Springs.
We didn't really need the items, and traveling over a 100 miles to get them did not make a whole lot of sense.
But after a month of buying things we actually DID need, and after a month of non-stop painting and plastering and building and constructing and desconstructing, both LC and I wanted to go.
Somewhere.
Explore.
Something.
See some of the area beyond that which we already knew.
The drive to Soda Springs was absolutely stunning, and looked absolutely nothing like I had imagined it to be.
I had pictured endless farmland and endless mostly flat land.
I couldn't have been more wrong if I had made a conscious EFFORT to be wrong.
The terrain was very very beautiful.
A lot of farm land - in both very large and very small swatches of land nestled between mountain ranges and wonderful valleys.
And the mountains.
Endless, beautiful, pine tree filled, grassland filled mountains
Still on the Interstate...............
Not long after we pulled off the Interstate and hit two lane highway, I asked LC to pull the truck over at the first opportunity.
I had not seen a river in a month and I missed the water.
We stopped briefly at river-side campground, and while LC stayed with the truck I walked down to the river to quickly snap a few pictures.................
Looking back towards my Mountain Boy and my truck.............
Not long after the river stop LC pulled the truck into an overlook, intuitively knowing that I would want to take pictures of the valley below us.
I stood looking out over the endless mountains, mesmerized by them as I always am when I see such beauty.
Looking at my watch I knew that we had to keep moving. Somebody was waiting to meet us in Soda Springs.
We had already passed Lava Hot Springs (I had no idea what that was but LC and I had already seen enough as we sped by to know that we wanted to stop there on the way home).
Power snapping pictures I climbed back into the truck...............
We couldn't help ourselves.
One more stop along the way.................
And yet one more (last) stop before meeting the woman in Soda.
This abandoned old shack stood alone in the middle of a wheat field.
We had dropped down into a huge, flat valley and the combination of deep blue sky, pale yellow fields as far as the eye could see, the rustic and rugged and weather-worn wood of the shack and the other small structure beside it, and finally the mountains in the far distance, was very compelling..................
In Soda Springs there are signs throughout the town that acknowledge the spirit and sacrifices of the pioneers who settled this area.
As I stood looking at this abandoned home (and even before we visited Soda Springs and saw the signs) I thought that this old structure must have at one time been home to early settlers..............
While looking up pioneer stories I found this link. It is specific more to Utah than Idaho, but speaks to challenges facing early pioneers to the west:
No comments:
Post a Comment