Our original plan was to not do much today except for driving to the middle of nowhere Oregon. However, since we did stuff in Sun Valley last night, it didn't make sense to drive 2 hours out of our way just to take in a few extra mountain views. Jess had found a pamphlet for the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument and since they had passport cancellations, we decided to do that on the way out to Oregon since it was kind of on the way. After putting it into Google Maps, we drive for 90 minutes only to find...the Oregon Trail? No Visitor Center (that was about 15 minutes away in town) and while it mentions possibly seeing horse fossils and there were pretty views of the Snake River, there wasn't much information. It did turn out that the Oregon Trail (and the Emigrant Trail) ran right near or under the road to the top of the ridge.
Apparently there are wagon ruts marked with white stakes and they ask that you don't walk on them so they can be preserved. That wasn't a problem because we didn't see any of them. We did drive up to the where you can hike the trails but things weren't clearly marked and it wasn't that interesting. On the plus side, it was neat seeing where the Oregon Trail in one of the more difficult sections and the scenery was nice. We also saw a lizard so that was fun.
We did make a brief stop at the Visitor Center (which was done relatively well) before getting back on the road. Since we had time, Jess looked for things to do around Boise and she found the Old Idaho State Penitentiary. This is one of only four territorial prisons left in the US and it was in operation until 1973. You can still go inside many of the buildings (excluding the ones they burned down in riots in 1973) including the original jail cells and the death row facility, complete with gallows. They only ever executed one person there before moving the facilities to the newer prison. The prison couldn't hold me though as I easily escaped. Perhaps locking the front door would have helped the prison lasting past the early 70's.
Once we were on the lam, it was another few hours until we got to our destination for the evening. Once you get into Oregon, there's basically nothing but curvy highways through mountains and next to creeks. There's probably a 60+ mile stretch where there is literally nothing besides the road. The views were nice though and reminded me of some of the areas of Montana we really liked. We finally got to our hotel, grabbed dinner and turned in for the night. We did decide to spend more time in Oregon so we rearranged some plans to give us more time to see all the sights here.
As they say in Oregon, "A beaver and a duck will always bring you luck." Note: no one says this.
