Twin Falls and the Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey

I know, it does not look real does it! It looks like a background painting for a movie! 

By lunch time we were in Twin Falls, a good rest point. Neither Ken nor I had been here before and hadn’t really thought much about the name. To enter Twin Falls, highway 93 is taken south off interstate 84. When we approached the main part of town, 93 took us across the Perrine Bridge over the Snake River. Oh my goodness, what an incredible sight! After coming off the flat lands of the southern Idaho valley and Craters of the Moon area, seeing this 90 degree drop off into a river was breathtaking! 

I had seen the Snake before and already knew it was an amazing geological feature. Seeing it here, far away from Hell’s Canyon, and still being so dramatic reinforced its role as a wild and scenic destination. There is actually Twin Falls as well as Shoshone Falls and Pillar Falls. We did not stay long enough to visit the falls, but the view from the visitor’s center was entertainment enough. 

This makes for a great moment to segway into a book I had been reading on our travels: Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel. Ken and I both kept commenting to each other: ‘Imagine seeing this in a covered wagon’ or ‘How long would it have taken in the prairie schooner to get from Idaho Falls to Twin Falls’ (though these cities may not have been named such at the time) or ‘What did the pioneer do when they came to a sheer cliff such as this?’ Some of these questions are answered in Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey and many other books on the pioneer event in the U.S. However, Women’s Diaries focuses on the migration as recorded by women, wives, fiancees, daughters, and even a few single women. My mother gave me this book many years ago when I was traveling west to Arizona to visit my great Uncle Andy.  I had not read it until now and this was the perfect time! 

In 2003 when my brother, sister, and Uncle Andy traveled to Montana to disperse of my mother’s ashes, we spent a lot of time on some of the Oregon Trail roads. We also spent a lot of time on the Lewis and Clark Trail. Even earlier, on my first drive to Alaska with my sister in 1999, we spent some time on different parts of the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail and even stopped in Guernsey, Wyoming to view wagon ruts http://www.nps.gov/oreg/planyourvisit/site7.htm . In 2007, the first time I drove to see my sister’s new home in Wichita, Kansas, I visited at the Pioneer Woman Museum in Ponca City, Oklahoma http://www.pioneerwomanmuseum.com/ .  All of these locations were now tied together with Women’s Diaries. For those interested in U.S. history, women’s history, mass migrations of people and some reasons why migrations happen, this would be an educational read. 

As seen here in the sunset, most of southern Idaho is flat. This aspect magnified the dramatic effect of the drop into the Snake River. 

We stay the course! Thank goodness our prairie schooner has 220 horses, enclosed climate control,  enclosed gear locker, and GPS (though it could be argued which is better, this or a scout)!