#411 Twin Falls County Fairgrounds, Filer, Idaho

We left Stanley and had considered staying over for a night in Ketchum but decided if we could just push on through it would be about a three-hour drive and we would probably survive.

We attempted to stay at the fairgrounds a few weeks back but they were having a big music festival and were sold out completely. Now it was over and they had plenty of space so we stopped in to have a full hookup for a bit as we have been boondocking for quite a while. It was familiar to us as we had been there before. We pulled in I went into the office and a nice lady talked to us about how to get registered and pay the fee.

Everybody likes to get congested in one area of the field because it has sewer we could care less about sewer and I’d rather be off to myself so we went about as far away as you can get way out in a field by ourselves. We had the whole place to ourselves and this is good for Bert too because he can explore more. I got connected and I found something was wrong with the electricity so I looked to where the big panel was that feeds the whole area and there was a breaker tripped so I reset it and things were fine. I used my splitter so that I could hook up to two separate hookups and get 60 amps of electricity rather than 30. This allowed us to run both air conditioners and not have to worry about overloading the 30-amp service. It was nice to have water and electricity and that was a good enough reason to be here. We would stay for two nights and I would plan out my fast track across the west towards San Francisco.

We did our usual maybe getting a bite to eat out and nosing around a bit getting groceries and filling up with fuel.

Shoshone Falls

The next day we were looking for something interesting to do and in an effort to find a hike we found a location called Shoshone Falls. We knew nothing about the area but we figured it might be pretty so we went ahead and planned our hike. It was a nice loop and some of it was pretty steep even though it was asphalt I got to tell you we were pretty tired by the time we got to the top of that hill. We looked at the falls and we thought they were quite pretty. It was flowing at only a fourth the normal amount of water. During the rainy season, it would have been amazing. Here's some pictures of what we found as we read the signs about the history of the area. We realized that before 1900 this place was a desert and they begin diverting the Snake River here and there to provide irrigation to create a farming world community here. Now there are farms everywhere and irrigation everywhere but it's all green and pretty and everything is growing wonderfully but it was amazing that it had been nothing more than a desert a while back.

We looked at some more of the signs and began to realize this is where Evel Knievel had made his attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon and I watched it live on TV as a kid. It was so cool to be in that spot as we speak.

This is the spot where the Evel Knievel attempted to fly across Snake River

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evel_Knievel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p1khN1xyBw

The links above show a video of how it went that day. He used a jet-propelled powered craft from a 45-degree ramp. He had his knee pressed against a dead man handle that would pull the chute if he passed out. Nobody will ever know exactly what happened but the Chute deployed in the middle of the arc of his jump. In essence, had already cleared the canyon but the parachute has slowed him down so much that it pulled him back and he landed just short of landing in the river and that would have been pretty disastrous. We really enjoyed the beauty of Shoshone Falls.

We went on back and explored one or two other sites that had been potential places to camp in Twin Falls. We were thinking more about it for future reference. One seemed to be a city-operated park and the descent that went down to where the RVs were was a one and a half lane wide road and there was no guardrail it was pretty terrifying to go down there in a car I couldn't even imagine the nerves it would have taken to me to take the rig down there. I looked around and there wasn't any real vacancy anyway. There’s no way I could have taken my rig down there it was just too creepy. The other one was near Twin Falls a mile outside of town. It also seemed to be operated by the county and it would have been a perfectly good boondock and they didn’t seem to have any problem with you being there. In the past, there had been water and some electricity now it was all shut down as far as services go but if you were in a pinch it did seem like a pretty good boondock. That would about do it for Twin Falls and we got ready for our trip west

If the weather was nice and we had plenty of time we might stretch going from Twin Falls to San Francisco out for nine days. However, it was always a hundred degrees or more and we didn't have an unlimited amount of time so we decided to bolt across the 600 miles in two nights.

This takes some pretty good planning you got to find places that are 300 miles each and you got to find out if they're decent places to stay. Since that would have been about a four-hour drive each day we need to find a place at two hours where we could refuel and go to a public park and just rest for an hour. All that required planning so I did that all evening at the fairgrounds and then we were ready to take off the next day.

Address: 215 Fair Ave, Filer, ID 83328

Phone: (208) 326-4398