As we headed east across Idaho on on I-86, we passed a sign for Register Rock. I’d never heard of it, but I knew we were on the route of the Oregon Trail and figured it probably had something to do with that. It was only 2 miles of the highway, so I made a quick decision to check it out.
It is, in fact, a large rock on which emigrants carved their names while camping on their way west. The rock is enclosed by a chain-link fence, no doubt because people from the 19th century carving their names in rock is history but people from the 21st century carving their names in rock is vandalism. (How do we know that people 200 years from now wouldn’t be fascinated by my name carved in a rock?)
We found several names from the middle to late 1800’s, admired them duly, and were back on the highway within 15 minutes of when we’d gotten off.