Day 41 - Moutain Home, Idaho to Huntington, Oregon - 124 Miles

Life on the road is seldom predictable. It often rains when you have outdoor tours in which to participate. Camps are full when you'd rather not drive one more mile. Laundry facilities are so dirty that you wouldn't wash your dog blanket in them. And mechanical difficulties can leave you sitting beside the road waiting for a long overdue rescue.

That unpredictable nature can also translate into positive things. It can rain on when you planned to attend museums all day, anyway. Gas at the next station you pull into can cost much less than you've been seeing all day. Camps that look full can have one more space left just for you (read last night's blog to see an example of this). And you can stumble over a special attraction that you didn't know was there, and it can turn out to be the best thing you've done in weeks.

The latter of the above items happened to us today. We had been planning on visiting the mining and geology museum in Boise, Idaho, but when we arrived we discovered that right next door was a fabulous botanical garden the likes of which we have seldom seen. Literally every type of garden setting, from lush shade gardens, to xeriscape and native plant gardens were fully represented. We just couldn't believe our wonderful luck.

From the Club directory of Boise I learned that: "the Idaho Botanical Garden, one of the first and oldest botanical gardens in Idaho, is a lush 15-acre tapestry of dappled shade and vibrant splashes of color. Nestled in the Boise Foothills, it is a sanctuary in the heart of the Old Penitentiary Historic District. The Garden promotes horticulture in the Treasure Valley using native and domestic plants adapted to the intermountain region."

"Today the Idaho Botanical Garden has blossomed into fourteen specialty gardens, each with a unique focus. Included are a contemporary English Garden, a Meditation Garden, a Children’s Garden, and an Heirloom Rose Garden. The Jane Falk Oppenheimer Heirloom Rose Garden, planted in 1989, consists of over 300 roses in 107 varieties, primarily varieties that have been under cultivation for more than a century."

The Idaho Botanical Garden is a nonprofit effort located at 2355 North Old Penitentiary Road, Boise, Idaho. Until 1973 the site served as the Old Idaho State Penitentiary's farm and nursery. After the penitentiary was closed, the land lay dormant for more than a decade, and in 1984 the gardens were first created. The facility is operated by a private, non-profit 501c corporation.

Concetta and I were so overjoyed with our good luck in finding this absolute gem that we whiled away the second half of the morning without a thought. I was personally so invigorated with all the beautiful plants and garden settings, that I took just under 200 photos and would have taken more if we had stayed the afternoon.

Many of the plants and trees are labeled on small placards near the base of the plant. We love this because when we come across a plant we really like, and could see having in our own yard, we photograph both the plant and the placard to help us when we go shopping at our local nursery.

Another aspect of the garden was the tremendous number of scrap steel sculptures that we encountered. We were just enthralled by the artist's clever combinations of "found" materials into stunning garden art. I found this on the web about the artist, whose name is Amber Conger: "...she has always been drawn to metals and sees unlimited possibilities in steel. She gathers her sculpture parts from local salvage yards, auctions, garage sales, and surplus centers. To her, the gears, bearings and mechanical objects are engineering marvels and she likes using these small parts that make the world go round."

Though I didn't always like Amber's sculptures, I did find them to be artistically clever and eye grabbing. In contrast with the softness of most of the flowers and plants in the garden, Amber's sculptures are hard, angular, rusty, and amazingly illogical and unexpected in form. But they make you stare for many minutes as you try to figure out what made Amber combine that particular truckload of discarded iron into that particular form.

Concetta and I have been talking for quite some time about fabricating a rock garden in our front yard. After today, and with the help of the photographs we gathered, I think we can get started this summer. We'll need some large rocks to be sure, but once those are acquired, we should be able to get all the plants we need from our local nursery. In addition, while we were in southern Wyoming, I collected some yucca seeds from plants that I encountered at two different museums, and I'm hopeful that I will be able to get them to germinate.

Once our visit to the Botanical Gardens was finished, we retreated back to the RV for our lunch. We had no intention of leaving the area, as the original reason for our visit, the "Mining and Geology Museum" was still to be visited. We knew we could spend all afternoon, but we hoped to spend an hour communing with some great rocks and minerals.

So after lunch we trekked once again up the path toward the Botanical Garden, but at the last minute veered to the west and continued on into the oldest section of the property that had once been the Idaho State Prison grounds. Concetta and I weren't interested in touring the penitentiary itself, but here's some information from the Idaho Historical Society should you decide to visit:

"The Old Idaho Penitentiary opened its doors in 1872 to some of the West’s most desperate criminals. Today, visitors can experience over 100 years of Idaho’s unique prison history with a visit to Solitary Confinement, cell blocks, and the gallows."

"The Old Idaho Penitentiary State Historic Site was a functional prison from 1872 to 1973 in the western United States, east of Boise, Idaho. The first building, also known as the Territorial Prison, was constructed in the Territory of Idaho in 1870. The territory was seven years old when the prison was built, a full two decades before statehood."

"From its beginnings as a single-cell house, the penitentiary grew to a complex of several distinctive buildings surrounded by a 17-foot-high sandstone wall. The stone was quarried from the nearby ridges by the resident convicts, who also assisted in later constructions."

"The Old Idaho Penitentiary is operated now by the Idaho State Historical Society. Over its 101 years of operation, the penitentiary received more than 13,000 inmates, with a maximum population of a little over 600. Two hundred and fifteen of the inmates were women. Two famous inmates were Harry Orchard and Lyda Southard. Orchard assassinated former Governor Frank Steunenberg in 1905 and Southard was known as Idaho's Lady Bluebeard for killing several of her husbands to collect upon their life insurance."

"Serious riots occurred in May 24, 1952, August 10, 1971, and March 7 and 8, 1973 over living conditions in the prison. The 416 resident inmates were moved to the new Idaho State Correctional Institution south of Boise and the Old Idaho Penitentiary was closed on December 3, 1973."

"In 1992, the Idaho State Historical Society recorded oral history interviews with fifteen former prison guards. These tapes and transcripts cover prison operations and remembrances from the 1950s to the closing of the prison. The collection is open for research at the society."

So there you have it. One day, if we come back this way again, we'll probably want to visit the Botanical Gardens again. When we do, I'm sure we'll want to complete our tour by visiting the prison museum. What we did come to visit was the Mining and Geology Museum which is housed in the "Trusty Dormitory" on the old Penitentiary grounds. I learned the following from the Museum's web site at https://www.idahomuseum.org/history/:

"The Idaho Museum of Mining and Geology (IMMG) is over 25 years old. The plan to open an Idaho museum that focused on the history of mining and geology in Idaho was sparked in 1988. The man behind this idea was Fred Shute, a geologist and a Boise jeweler. Fred was assisted early on by a dedicated and influential group of Idahoans. This small but enthusiastic band of engineers, businessmen, and geologists worked tirelessly for almost 5 years to bring their dream of a museum to fruition."

"Those first years were filled with both satisfaction and frustration. The museum board got off to a strong start and on January 26, 1989, the Idaho Museum of Mining and Geology became incorporated as a Foundation. The board leased 450 square feet of office space in Boise at 106 N. 6th as they worked on plans for a permanent museum site at elsewhere in the city."

"By 1992 there was still no sign of a permanent museum site. At this point, IMMG was renting the auditorium at the Old Penitentiary in east Boise for its annual membership meeting. By now there were 100 members of IMMG. The board was beginning to offer field trips to historic mining towns in southern Idaho. The IMMG began talks with the Idaho State Historical Society (ISHS) and Parks and Recreation to renovate a storage building in Julia Davis Park to use as a museum. This was another great idea that never panned out."

"Then in May of 1992, the IMMG learned the Trusty Dorm at the Old Penitentiary was available. With new-found vigor, the board took the steps needed to rent the old, fixer-upper, 2,300-square foot building for $100 a month. What Fred Shute had envisioned was now unfolding before him, but not without approximately 1 1/2 years of clean-up and setting up displays before the Idaho Museum of Mining and Geology opened."

Of course there is a lot more history than I have included here, but if this is something that really interests you, please pull up the museum's web site and take a look. Suffice it to say that Concetta and I were totally enthralled by our tour of the museum. They had just oodles of rock specimens, both rough and polished.

They included in their teachings short features on the top ten asteroid hits on planet earth and they effects they've had on the rock structure at the impact sites, and another on the composition of meteorites. Both were fascinating, as was another video that we watched that showed the large continent known as Pangea breaking up to form the separate landmasses of North America, South American, Europe, and Africa 250 million years ago.

After the breakup, were were especially intrigued to see how many millions of years went by and huge portions of North America, especially the west coast, were under water.

Of course I liked the displays of vintage mining equipment, which included a miners dwelling, a couple of ore cars, sluice equipment, a hydraulic "water blaster" used to increase the flow of ore to placer miners, and a recreated deep mine hoist.

The museum is small, so it's not hard to see it all in an hour. There is no fee for entrance, but I left a donation as well as making a small purchase. I was hoping to buy the Oregon copy of the "Roadside Geology" series, but they were fresh out.

And that was our day. We didn't get back to the RV until just after 2:00 p.m., and we still wanted to put some miles on the rig before camping for the night. So we fed Ms. GPS with an address for a camp in Huntington, Oregon, and set out to run the border before dinnertime. As fate would have it, Ms. GPS unerringly guided us out of the congested city of Boise and onto Interstate 94. From there it was an easy trek across the border to Oregon.

We got to "Catfish Junction" RV park about 4:00 p.m. and, though the park wasn't anything to write home about, the cost was cheap at $26.00, and the manager gave us a premier site in the shade of some leafy trees. Tomorrow we're headed for Baker City, Oregon, where we plan to do our last Oregon Trail museum, one that's actually IN Oregon. With that bit of important business out of the way, we'll be turning the old RV toward Nevada.

I hate to see this sojourn around the wonderful Northwest come to a close. The weather has been pretty darn terrific. Everyone we've met has gone out of their way to greet us warmly and to help us. And, most important, we have added to our knowledge in everything from history and geology, to horticulture and geography. We just loved it. We hope YOU take the bait, and do your own tour around this great country of ours, and when you do, we wish you exciting destinations and memorable travels from the Davises, the Happy Wanderers.