Snow and hot springs

Yankee Fork Gold Dredge

Spent the morning in Sunbeam visiting an old gold dredge and the old town of Bonanza City, now a ghost town.  There was a lot of mining in this area a century ago and when the gold ran out or companies went bust they just left everything and moved on.  Was snowed on the entire time, an experience that is still novel enough to bring and keep a stupid grin on my face.



Sunbeam Hot Springs

Leaving Sunbeam we travelled through the Sawtooth National Park Area down to Twin Falls.  An absolutely beautiful, scenic area that included a small hot spring.  It even smelt like Rotorua.  Ah, the smells of home.



One very dirty pick up

Took the pickup in for a service at Twin Falls.  Thought that after almost 9000 miles it would be a good thing.  He’s still real dirty though – thought about a car wash but we had showers on and off all day so that job will have to wait for another day.  How long until you get here Wally?  Took in a few of the sights around Twin Falls area including the huge Perrine bridge at the entrance to the city, Shoshone and Twin Falls and Balanced Rock out at Castleford.


Perrine Bridge

Shoshone Falls

Balanced Rock

The next day saw us travel to Almo (not to be confused with Elmo – a cute

Steinfell's Dome

red muppet) and the City of Rocks.  We zigzagged through rural Idaho to get there.  Some massive irrigation systems in the fields.  Guessing this is where the potatoes come from.  The weather was wet virtually the whole day and since we are mostly sunshine hikers, with the exception of one short hike, we stayed in the car.  Some very impressive granite outcrops.  Reminiscent of Montserrat in Spain.  The road very greasy and slippery in a number of places so it was a good thing we unhitched the RV at the Visitors Centre.

Soda Springs Geyser

We overnighted in a Walmart Car park (we needed some groceries, it was raining so we just didn’t leave) then headed out to Lava Hot Springs and Soda Springs.  We stopped at Soda Springs first where there is a man-made geyser (it occurred as the result of an accident and is now capped and timed) that erupts every hour on the hour.  We made it with a couple of minutes to spare.  It goes up about 100’ into the air.  Wonder how it compares to Old Faithful.

Headed back through the snow to Lava Hot Springs where we took time out to relax in some hot pools.  Very much like De Brett’s in Taupo – outdoor setting with pools of varying temperature.  We even had a light snow fall while we were soaking although that soon turned to rain which stayed with us for the rest of the day.

Look Ma, no hands

Ahhhhh, bliss



Old Faithful

Travelled north to West Yellowstone.  As with the other National Parks there is still so much snow around so limited with what we can do.  Still took us a couple of days to do it though.  First day we headed to Old Faithful.  We waited patiently with the hundreds of other tourists for the regular 4 minute show.  Next show in 90 minutes folks. 

Crested Pool - Lovely colours

90 minutes later we were still meandering around the other geysers and hot springs in the vicinity.  Had a bonus showing of Grand Geyser that erupted just as we rocked up to it.  Gotta be happy about that.  Not so happy about the freezing 

Leather Pool - Looked so inviting

snowstorm that hit at the same time.  Snowstorm is probably not the right word for the amount of snow we got hit by but we grew up in sunny Napier so what would we know.  Check out this video of the geyser and snowstorm.

The next section of Yellowstone we graced with our presence was the magnificent Mammoth Hot Springs.  Spent a few hours wandering around here too before making our way back to Montana for a couple of days. 

Mound Terrace

Canary Spring
Who spotted our RV in the top right corner?

For the record, there is no comparison.