Beautiful Jerome

Taking up Lisa on her offer, I spent last weekend in Jerome with Wes, Lisa & Richard.  I highly recommend this activity to anyone who gets anywhere close to Jerome.  Their home is beautiful inside and out, and they are all just a lot of fun to hang out with.  Here are a couple of photos of the beautiful quilts hanging in the guest room.  I am chagrined to have come away with no photos of their yard - front and back it has lots of lovely flowers.

 

Unfortunately for Wes I did happen upon my arrival to mistake him for an older gentleman, but what can I say?  There was gray hair sticking out from under the ball cap.

Wes was very gracious in taking me to see the sights in and around Jerome.

 Our first stop was the Burnt Lemon Grill.  I had a difficult time choosing from the wide variety of dishes on the menu, but finally settled on the BBQ Pastrami Sandwich with sweet potato fries and a Huckleberry Lemonade.  As shown in the photo, in addition to the pastrami the bun held a lot of other goodies, including bacon, pepper jack cheese, onion rings, and shredded cabbage.  The sweet potato fries came with a dipping sauce that is out of this world, and the lemonade was great.  Apparently they roast the lemons before squeezing them, giving the lemonade a unique flavor.  It was good, but Lisa says it is even better as the hot lemonade they serve in the winter.

Once we were all full, we dropped Lisa & Richard off at the house and Wes & I went off to see the sights.  We drove around Jerome and saw a lot of industry (driving into town one would get the mistaken impression that there is only one industry in town - and there certainly is a lot of that particular industry going on, but I was impressed with all the other industries.  We also went by the District Yard and I was impressed with the variety of tractors Wes gets to drive during his summer job.

Leaving town, we went over to see Shoshone Falls.  I have been to Twin and Jerome in the past, and always wanted to see this sight but never had time. So on this trip it was the first stop.

 This is a nice photo in which I actually caught the rainbow effect.

 The photo above and the one below both are a result of the panoramic setting on my new camera (in my phone).  I only recently found that such a setting exists for this camera, and set about using it profusely last Saturday.

Once we had seen these Falls from 3 or 4 different vantage points, Wes took me to Ritter Island State Park to see some more.  This park is on the Snake River almost due south of Hagerman, and if I remember right, it is the site of a former ferry on the Oregon Trail.  There is a power generation station there, and these waterfalls nearby.

 From a distance.

Closer up of the one on the right -------------------------------------------- and the one on the left.

 And when you turn around, this is what you see.  Above you see a guy on a paddle board making his way around the island - which, by the way is rather large.  And below you see a panoramic shot of the river side of the trail to the waterfalls.  It was very odd to note how lush and green the river bottoms were, and yet on the other side the landscape was just as barren as you could find anywhere.

 Our next stop was the Malad Gorge State Park, right along side of I-84, by the Tuttle exit (147).  Andy's dad told me about this and it really was worth seeing.  They have a foot bridge on which you can walk out across the gorge and get a good view straight down.  Apparently at times they have folks out there BASE jumping, but not on the day we were there.  Here are some photos and a video showing how the gorge pretty much appears out of nowhere.

 An appropriate designation.

 Looking east "up" the gorge from the bridge.

Looking west "down" the gorge toward the Snake River from the bridge.

 Looking straight down from the bridge to the rocks and rapids below - truly the devil's washbowl.

And this is how the shot shown above looks as seen from down the river a ways, 

looking back up the river to the east.

And here is Papi himself next to a huge sage brush - bigger than me!

While we were on the bridge at Malad Gorge this guy comes up to us and tells us we really need to go see Niagra Springs, just south of Wendell, where the water just comes shooting out of the side of the hill. So we decided to go see it. And he was right. It was incredible to see the water come pouring out of the side of the mountain. Lots of green below it, but none above it. And the water was so clear. I thought it was amazing.

 The view of the top of the mountain.

 

Above and below are shots of where the water comes out. 

 

And this is not just a small stream - there is a lot of water pouring out of the side of the mountain.

 

You cannot really see how clear the water is because of the turbulance, but it is really clear.