Day 40 - Heyburn to Moutain Home, Idaho - 119 Miles

Interesting day today. We spent a rather large part of our travel day plying Interstate 84 since it was basically the only route headed up to Boise, the direction we wanted to go. Now we don't like traveling the Interstates much, but we did manage to salvage a potentially "four-lane" day by taking a couple of "holidays" from divided-highway travel. This morning we decided to get off the blue highway and seek out Hagerman, Idaho, which purportedly had a nice fossil museum. According to our information brochures, fossils abound in the Hagerman area, and the museum there had a fossil horse for us to see.

But once we got to Hagerman, we discovered that the fossil museum hadn't heard we were coming and didn't bother to open today. I took a photo of the building just so I could remember how rude they had been, and, while I was at it, a photo of a cool '56 chevy four-door that was for sale on the main street opposite the museum. I winced at the owner's asking price of $28,000, since the lovely two-tone, albeit nicely-restored classic had two too many doors.

Then, since it was getting close to lunchtime, and not wanting to waste a perfectly good rural setting, we pulled over in the tiny town of "Bliss" just down the road from Hagerman and had lunch beneath a spreading willow tree. We were all set with a nice park setting out our dining room window that came complete with a couple of horseshoe pits. Boy, if I had had a couple of horseshoes in the rig I would have been right out there to shoot a few.

After leaving bliss, we sailed on down the rural Route 30 just to see how far we could get before we'd be forced to get back on the Interstate. Unfortunately it was only a mile or two before we had to hit the Interstate on-ramp. Still, it's always nice to travel the two-lanes if you can find them.

Since we really didn't want to be traveling on Interstate 84, we both kept an eye out for any point-of-interest sign that might lead us to a neat adventure. So we were fortunate when we saw the sign for "Three Island Crossing" State Park and the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. Before long we were pulling up to the gate, where a wonderfully friendly gate attendant loaded us down with literature, gave us directions on how to tour the nearby camp site and Interpretive Center, and finished by charging us the rather paltry sum of $5.00 to enter.

The camping area looked nice. Were it later in the day, we definitely would have been tempted to remain after our tour of the Interpretive Center. Yes, it lacked sewer connections, and we would have to use a dump station, but the setting beneath the trees and adjacent to the Snake River was just outstanding.

If anyone were to ask me, I'd say that I just never get tired of touring emigrant trail museums. But Concetta said that the subject was starting to get slightly repetitive. Still, I think both of us found a great deal to appreciate and ponder in the Three Island Crossing Interpretive Center. Naturally, I photographed just about everything that was displayed in case I needed it for the blog, which usually means I miss actually reading some things that it would be nice to know to appreciate the museum experience more fully.

The one thing that I got to see that I had not appreciated before, was a display of Native American Camas bulbs on which they based a good portion of their diet in many of the high desert locations that we have visited recently. They had a couple of large bowls of them to look at and learn about.

I did some research to see what exactly a Camas was and why the Indians found it so valuable. I found this discussion on the web at http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/828:

"The Plateau Culture Area is the region which extends east from the Cascade Mountains in Washington to the Rocky Mountains in Montana. It extends from the Fraser River in British Columbia to the Blue Mountains in Oregon. The Indian tribes which inhabited this area have historic and cultural ties with the tribes on the Pacific Coast as well as with the tribes on the Northern Plains."

"The Plateau tribes gathered and used over 130 different wild plants. It is estimated that from 40% to 60% of their calories came from the plant foods which they gathered. One of the most important root crops for the Plateau tribes was camas, which provided a major source of carbohydrates for their diet."

"Camas is a lily-like plant whose bulb can be fire-baked to make a sweet and nutritious staple. In some places in the Northwest, camas was so common that non-Indian travelers would mistake the plant’s blue flowers for distant lakes.

"Camas is very high in protein: 5.4 ounces of protein per pound of roots. In comparison, steelhead trout (Salmo gairdneri) has 3.4 ounces of protein per pound.""

"The proper time to gather camas is when the lower half of the flowers begins to fade. Indian people generally gathered camas in June, but this varied according to altitude and seasonal weather conditions. Some of the tribes, such as the Flathead, designated June as Camas Moon."

"The camas was often dug up using digging sticks made from elk antlers. A woman could dig up about a bushel of roots in a day from a site that was about half an acre in size."

"At the camas digging camps, the camas was usually cooked in earth ovens before eating it or storing it. Since the same camps were used each season, the pit ovens used for roasting the camas were also reused."

"Although the men gathered the wood for the ovens, men were not allowed near the roasting pits for fear that the camas would not be roasted properly."

"The oven (a roasting pit dug into the ground) was preheated by building a fire in it and placing small rocks (about 5″ in diameter) in with the wood. In addition to the small rocks, some pits had large flat stones on the bottom which were also heated by the fire. When the rocks were hot, they were covered with wet vegetation such as slough grass, alder branches, willow, and/or skunk cabbage leaves. Then the camas bulbs were placed on top of the vegetation."

"Sometimes Douglas onions (Allium douglasii) were placed in with the camas. The camas was then covered with bark and earth and a fire was built on top of the oven. Cooking usually took between 12 and 70 hours, depending on the number of camas bulbs in the oven."

"The camas which was intended for storage was then dried for about a week. Dried camas can be preserved for many years. Some American explorers report eating camas that had been prepared 36 years earlier."

"The early Europeans in the area, such as Lewis and Clark, occasionally consumed camas after they were shown how to harvest it and prepare it. One Jesuit missionary fermented camas to make alcohol. Another Jesuit missionary observed that the consumption of camas by those unaccustomed to it is “followed by strong odors accompanied by loud sounds”."

"In order to increase the camas yield, the camas areas, as well as other root gathering areas, were occasionally burned over."

So there you have it. I just learned about a subject I knew nothing about five minutes ago. Now I'm going to be keeping an eye out for Camas plants wherever we roam in the future. I want to see if I can dig up one with my elk antler digging stick. Maybe we can even get some to grow at our house back in northern Nevada.

You're probably wondering why the Three Island Crossing was an important part of the Oregon Trail experience. I was, too. I found this discussion at https://www.nps.gov/oreg/planyourvisit/site9.htm:

"At Three Island Crossing emigrants on the Oregon Trail reached a critical junction. Here they had to decide whether to make the difficult crossing of the Snake River or take a longer alternative route along the south side of the river."

"Some of the hardest things the emigrants had to do was crossing rivers. When you read the diaries there are a lot of incidents of deaths at the river crossings. So when they get to Three Island Crossing they’ve got a decision to make. They could continue on down the south side of the Snake which was known as the dry and the longest route and the more desolate route or they could risk crossing. So it was whether you wanted to risk drowning or take the longer route."

"Three Island Crossing was the most important and difficult river crossing in Idaho. Crossing the Snake River was always dangerous, but when the water was low enough to negotiate, everyone crossed who could, to take advantage of the more favorable northern route to Fort Boise."

On September 11, 1843, William T. Newby wrote ". . . crossed Snake Rive[r]. First we drove over a part of the river one hundred yards wide on to a island, the[n] over a northern branch 75 yards wide on a second island; then we tide a string of wagons together by a chane in the ring of the lead cattles yoak & made fast to the wagon of all a horse & before & him led. We carried as many a[s] fifteen wagons at one time. . . . The water was ten inches up the waggeo[n] beds in the deepe places."

When Concetta and I left the Interpretive Center we drove down as close as possible to the river, then I walked out across the sagelands to the river's edge. Though we were east of the Three Island Crossing at that point, I could just imagine by looking at the width and flow rate of the Snake that crossing it in a wagon would take real guts. Crossing it successfully when the river was high would take a great deal of luck as well as guts.

I couldn't tell how deep the Snake is at that point, but I'm sure that high water kept many a wagon train on the south bank until conditions were more favorable. Losing all your supplies when the current catches your team and wagon and submerges the lot would have been devastating to these emigrants if they even lived through the tragedy.

The park at Three Island is quite nice, and we even thought about staying the night. But since we hadn't made many miles so far we opted to drive a little further. This idea was soon quashed when we approached the off-ramp for Mountain Home and I had spotted the tell-tail blue sign of our favorite shopping location and yours, Walmart!

Since Walmart is basically one-stop-shopping for RVers, we just can't pass one up when we need supplies. Everything from prescriptions to automotive parts, and from fresh fruit to deli items are available in super-sized quantities. Once we had acquired a cart-full of goodies, and then stowed the goodies away in the rig, we headed south from the Interstate to see if we could find the Mountain Home RV Resort.

Finding the resort turned out to be easy enough as it was just down the street from Walmart. But our hopes for getting a spot for the night were almost immediately dashed when a pickup truck and attendant fifth wheel trailer were just leaving the park as we made ready to enter.

"Do you suppose that they just turned those guys away," Concetta asked.

"Doesn't look good," I said. "But let's stop at the office just in case."

But our hopes sank further as we rolled up to the office and saw that someone had posted a large A-frame sign declaring that the park had "NO VACANCIES."

Concetta and I both sat and stared at the sign for a moment. Then, after talking it over, we both decided that I should go inside and make them tell me in person there was no room. I jumped down and headed over to the door. But just as I reached the front entrance, a gentleman came out and point blank told me that the sign was correct. They had no vacancies."

Crestfallen, I retreated to the rig and told Concetta the bad news. Then I climbed into the driver's seat, and we set off into the park to make a circle of the grounds before heading back down the drive.

The park was nothing short of incredible. Ever single site had a concrete slab and a nice picnic table. The whole park was just "crowded with large shady trees." Nearly all the rigs looked well-kept, and the fifth-wheel sites often had new trucks parked in front. We both could tell that we were missing out on a very nice place to spend the night.

As we rolled closer to the front gate again, and before we turned the corner to head out, Concetta couldn't help but voice her disappointment. At that point, in an effort to cheer her up, I said, "Don't worry, by the time we turn this corner coming up, the guy will be out at the front door again to stop us and tell us we can stay."

"Wouldn't that be nice," Concetta said, though I could tell she thought I was dreaming.

Then, just as we actually turned the corner and started for the exit, a woman appeared on the sidewalk and waved to us. I immediately stopped, and she came up to the window. "You can stay," she said. "That guy who just left gave up his spot early. If you still want a space, you can have his."

I made some remark to Concetta about positive thinking, but in truth I was pretty astounded myself for correctly predicting the outcome. I told the woman when I went into register that I had a certain talent for clairvoyance, and perhaps she believed me. But however this came about, we got to stay and the chap who had first told us there was no room, now conducted us to our very own site #82 beneath a bevy of beautiful trees. I have to tell you, it was sweet!

So here we are in the first camp that you could actually describe as paradise this whole vacation, at least in a concrete and swimming pool sort of way. Of course, if you like your camp spots a little more rugged and a little less predictable, you will probably want to stay in the state or federal parks. And if you do decide to hit the road and look for those campsite gems that are hiding out there waiting to be found, we wish you exciting destinations and memorable travels from the Davises, the Happy Wanderers.