Unsuccessful Day

Minidoka Internment National Monument

As you may have read (or will possibly read), Sedwick was unable to make any jumps today. Although it may not seem so to him, I am truly sad for him. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better (although hopefully he'll be done by 2pm cause we have some unbelievable number of miles to cover over the next 14 days).

Nancy and I had a somewhat unsuccessful day as well. We started out by trying to find the Minidoka Internment Camp National Historical Site. While we finally successfully found it, there wasn't much to see. In addition to the pictures here, we found some other things that COULD have been part of the internment camp, but they were unmarked, and we didn't take pictures. In hindsight, it's too bad, because it would have been fun to make up some of our own descriptions of those places. They did, however, provide a map of the camp when it actually existed. Why this is a national monument, we are not sure. Since we did not have much to see, we thought we would share the view from the guard station (not quite still standing), so that you could see the view the Japanese Internees (is that a word?) had of their new home. Below you can see a sign of the map of the "relocation" center.


Hagerman Fossil Beds

Well, after driving about 30 miles to see the Hagerman Fossil Beds, we found the very small building. We were asked whether we'd like to see a short video, to which question we answered, "sure." Neither of us thought the video was well done, but we did learn a few things. First, we learned that when the climate changes, animals have to either migrate, adapt, or die. Who knew? We learned that when people were on the Oregon trail, they sometimes didn't have many clothes. For example, men sometimes went without boots, women sometimes went without bonnets and sometimes even wore their best dresses all of the time because that's all they had left.

Regardless, while the building was small, it had some very interesting fossils, most notably the Hagerman Horse, which apparently is the earliest known horse assigned the genus Equus. It is also apparently believed to be more closely related to Grevy's Zebra that now lives in Africa rather than to modern horse species.

We spent like a half hour at Hagerman Fossil Beds. We then made our way to the Muffler Man in Wendell, ID, because, hey, it was on our way back to Twin Falls. As we drove by on the highway, Eagle Eyes (that's me, by the way) noticed the big-ass Muffler Man on the side of the highway. It was not hard to miss (although the driver - Nancy - did miss it, but she doesn't have those eagle eyes). Cap'n Mick Mick (that's Nancy's GPS for those of you who are not aware of this) took us to a great viewing area where we could get a decent picture. But, as Nancy got out of the car to get her camera from the back, two wild dogs came charging at her (she wanted me to say they were wild; I'm quite sure they were not - but we should not tell her so).

Shoshone Falls

Known as the "Niagara Falls of the West," Shoshone Falls pamphlets claim that it is "higher than Niagara Falls." By that, however, I think they mean elevation-wise. Shoshone Falls is best presented in pictures. So, here's another video that I very very quickly made tonight.



Twin Falls

We are not sure that Twin Falls still exist. According to Jimmy the base-jumping instructor, they may no longer be there because they dammed up the river. But, regardless, Cap'n Mick Mick thought he knew where they were, but after five failed attempts we finally gave up.

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