OFI 694: Across The Fruited (Snake River) Plain

Back In Yellowstone

Alright, as I mentioned last Tuesday I had my annual trip to Yellowstone National Park coming up with my daughter Hattie.  Well, that trip took place last weekend, and I am writing this the day after coming home.

The trip was great.  Here is the count for this trip:

• No Moose (we failed on our moose quest)
• 2 Grizzly bears (one that almost hit the pickup)
• 3 Black bears (one sow with two cubs)
• 5 Wolves
• 2 Coyotes
• 3 River Otters
• Too many elk, buffalo, mule deer and antelope to count

We had a lot of snow this year, not that too much of it stuck.  But there was enough to make for some icy roads on different days.  It is always fun to reminisce on this trip with Hattie.  We started doing this as a father/daughter trip when she was 10.  Now she is 13, and this was the fourth annual expedition.

Looking back it is a really great way to watch her grow up.  The first two years we had my 2003 Dodge pickup.  It had a shell on it, so I made a bed in the back and that is where we camped in the 20 degree overnight temperatures.  However, in 2017 I bought a new truck and sold that one, and I no longer have a camper shell.  So, for the past two years I have rented a travel trailer and pulled that over there for the long weekend.

If you are wondering why I don’t just take a tent, the answer is bears.  This could be a totally different episode, but Grizzly bears are no longer endangered, and the instances of conflict with humans has been going up.  On the east side of the park and in the national forest on the east side of the park the campgrounds do not allow camping in anything but hard sided trailers.

I have quite a few friends in the fish and game world who are very familiar with some of the ways in which grizzly bears have harmed humans in the past.  Between hearing those stories and seeing the restrictions on camping on the east side of the park, I decided to make that my policy where we camp on the west side of the park as well.  So, only hard sided camping for us in grizzly country.

Now that Hattie is 13 she cooked most of our meals and took on a lot more responsibility than she did when she was 10 – of course.  Also, her devotion to finding wildlife is impressive to me.  Our first day there was a long one, and at about 5:30 in the evening we came to a cross roads.  If we went straight it took us up to the north entrance of the park, and then we would loop back down to our campground.  This would get us home well after dark at about 7:30 pm.

Or, we could go left and be back in camp by about 6pm.  Hattie said “keep going”, so we did.  And by doing so we ended up coming across a black bear with two cubs which is always fun to see.

Across The Fruited (Snake River) Plain

The drive from our farm to West Yellowstone, Montana (where we enter the park) takes about 6.5 to 7 hours depending on conditions, road construction, etc.  I’ve done this drive a million times, dating back to when I was a student at Montana State University and doing an internship in Boise selling agricultural chemicals.

This is a really easy drive for me, and a longer one for Hattie.  I started wondering why that was.  First, let me tell you my route.  There are basically two routes you can take from Kuna, Idaho to West Yellowstone, Montana.  They are roughly equal in the time it will take you.

The route that most people will choose will have you on interstate highways all the way to Idaho Falls.  You will go southeast on Interstate 84 past Burley, Idaho until it spits and you find yourself following Interstate 86 to its intersection with Interstate 15 just north of Pocatello, Idaho.  From here you will drive north on the interstate and exit onto U.S. 20 in Idaho Falls and follow it all the way to West Yellowstone.

I guess I have something in common with Robert Frost, because I do not choose this route.  Even with its non-stop travel and 80mph speed limits, I have no desire to follow this path on my way to Yellowstone.  Instead, I choose the road less traveled.

I like to get off of Interstate 84 in Mountain Home, Idaho and head due east.  If I take this route I will have counted a total of 11 towns that I pass through between our farm and West Yellowstone.  The biggest of all of these is Rexburg with just over 28,000 people (which I just touch the outskirts of) followed by Mountain Home with just over 14,000 people (which I barely scrape the outskirts of).

Other than these two cities that I barely notice, I hit towns with names like Howe, Picabo, Mud Lake, Island Park and Arco.  The last of which is the first city ever lit by atomic power.  I get to see sights like the Craters Of The Moon National Monument and the tops of several ancient volcanoes that stand alone on the barren and isolated north side of the Snake River Plain.

And, all along the way I get to observe agriculture.  Being interested in the crops, the machinery, the people and varying growing seasons makes this drive go by really fast for me.  There is always something agricultural outside my windshield that keeps me captivated.

It really starts off on the Camas Prarie for me, which is an agricultural area bordered by mountains to the north and south that sits at about 5,000 feet.  This whole area is anchored by the town of Fairfield, Idaho, which you would miss if the speed limit did not force you slow down.  There is a lot of hay grown here and not much else.  There is a short growing season here and pretty brutal winters with lots of winds, some of the coldest temperatures in Idaho and deep – deep snow.

After you traverse the Camas Prarie you go through some BLM grazing lands and then descend a little bit into the bottom of the Wood River Valley.  From your descent into the valley to your ascent out of it on the east side of Picabo you are looking at a lot of great pasture land and grass hay ground.  All of it is punctuated by the presence of wildlife with antelope and elk down in the pastures and some of the best trout fishing in the world in Silver Creek.

After you climb out of this area you hit Carey, Idaho for just a moment where the pattern is repeated.  Not too far out of Carey you find yourself in the Craters Of The Moon, surrounded by the most inhospitable terrain known to man.  Nothing but lava rock for as far as the eye can see.  It is quite fascinating.  And then the lava gives way to more grazing and alfalfa as you approach Arco.  All the while you pass through BLM ground that cattle and sheep graze upon.

Once I pass through Arco I take a slight turn up towards Howe.  It is all high desert coming into Howe, but heading east out of Howe gets into some serious hay ground.  Some of the best hay in the world is grown here, evidenced by who is growing it here – Standlee Forage and Simplot just to name of a couple of the signs you see.

Eventually you depart the hay ground and climb back into high desert, only to cross the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) – a very historic part of Idaho known for top secret projects and nuclear energy production (and the reason why Arco was the first city to ever be lit by atomic power).

After you get through the INL you drop into Mud Lake and then Terreton.  You are in the middle of nowhere when you pass through these neighboring towns, but you can tell by the inventory in the lots of the farm equipment dealers just how serious the farming is out here.

Then into some more high desert and across Interstate 15 to find yourself in more bottom type lands near Rexburg, St. Anthony and Ashton.  Lots of grazing throughout this area.  And as you drive north on Highway 20 towards Ashton if you have a keen eye (and a little inside knowledge of Idaho agriculture) you will notice large fields of seed potatoes.  That is right, Idaho produces a lot of seed crops, and we produce the finest potato seed in the world to the east of Highway 20 in the early morning shadows of the Grand Tetons.

This area always warrants a stop.  Even though as far west as Howe I can start to notice the tops of the Grand Tetons, once you hit Highway 20 to the north of Rexburg they are there in their full majesty.  There is something mythical to me about looking at all of this crop land leading to the giant mountains in the distance.

The most famous pictures of the Grand Tetons are taken from their eastern side in Wyoming.  But you have never seen the full glory of the Rocky Mountains until you have pulled over and tried look at this magnificent range from Highway 20 near Ashton.  It is breath taking and so large in scope that you literally need to turn your head as if you were taking a panoramic photo to see it all.  On the drive home yesterday it particularly beautiful as the mountains were completely covered in snow below a crisp blue sky full of sun.

After you go through Ashton you almost immediately cross the Warm River and begin a steep ascent onto the Yellowstone Plateau and into Island Park.  And with all of the pine you might think that your viewing of agriculture has stopped.  But you would only think this if you failed stop in at the Frostop Drive In before leaving Ashton to get a huckleberry shake.

If you had got yourself one of these delicious shakes you would realize that agriculture exists right there in forest with the foraging of these delicious berries used flavor your shake.  About the time you have finished your shake you will have passed through the long area called Island Park which sits in the forest to the west of Yellowstone National Park boundary.  Then you will cross the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River and burst into the high grazing country of Eastern Idaho.

There are cattle on tall grass pasture for as far as the eye can see, leading right up to the pines that hide grizzly bears and wolves.  And you wonder how many head are lost to predators in this area every year.  And all along Highway 20 you are passing logging trucks, though not as many as there once were, and you realize the agriculture is alive and well in the forest with harvests of lumber as well.

Soon, you pass through the last vestiges of Island Park and climb the continental divide.  It is here that you enter into Montana and descend into West Yellowstone.  With the incredible park ahead of you and glacier carved peaks to the south of Henry’s Lake behind you, you start to think of the wilds.  I think of movies like Jeremiah Johnson and the Revenant.  And for the next few days my mind shifts from agriculture to what it must have been like to try and survive in this land before all of the modern conveniences.

I’ll gas up in West Yellowstone before heading into the park.  And as I climb back into the pickup I’ll wonder where the time went and why the trip went by so fast.  The answer is agriculture and being able to see such an astounding cross section of farming and ranching through the windshield of my pickup while I continue a wonderful family tradition with my daughter.

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