It seemed like a serious omission to visit Idaho and not tour the Idaho Potato Museum. It meant driving an extra 50 miles round trip, but that seemed like a small price to pay. And after visiting the museum, I would recommend going to see it if you’re within 25 miles. But not much further.
It was, in short, a museum about the origins of the potato, types of potatoes, growing and harvesting potatoes, and cooking potatoes. The vessels on the upper right are in honor of the potato god.
The collection at lower left is potato mashers.
I found some false info in the museum. Having grown up in Des Plaines and eaten at the McDonald’s in question many times, I can state with complete certainty that it’s in Illinois and not in Iowa.
Here’s Colorado’s contribution to potato culture.
We stopped in the Potato Station Cafe and shared an order of French fries and a dish of huckleberry potato ice cream, which was good and tasted like … ice cream.
We took our time and read everything there was to read. It didn’t make my top 5 list of museums I’ve visited, but it’s probably in the top 100.
And since I brought it up. Here are the top 5 in no particular order.
National WW1 Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri
National Museum of the USAF in Dayton, Ohio
Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum in Auburn, Indiana
Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin
American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio
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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.
The Snake River runs just north of Twin Falls, Idaho. We were beginning our long drive home on this day, but we wanted to see some falls. There were many to choose from, but we settled on two. The first was Perrine Coulee Falls, a 200-foot tall stream of water that plunges into the canyon near the Perrine Bridge. We drove over the bridge (and saw the falls) on our way into the city on Thursday evening.
The canyon here is wide and filled with a golf course.
I walked behind the falls and only got a little damp.
We then drove five miles or so to Shoshone Falls. We had to pay $5 (I think) to get into the park, and I’m torn about whether it was worth it. The falls is billed as “The Niagara of the West,” but most of the flow was diverted to water potato crops. What was left wasn’t very impressive. When it’s not turned off, the falls fills the entire gorge.
During the remainder of our time in Idaho, we saw many fields being watered. We made a joke of pointing and saying, “There’s the rest of Shoshone Falls.” I guess French fries trump scenery, but I was disappointed. My wife and I both thought the view to the west down the gorge was more impressive.
It was somewhere at the far end of these photos, or just around that bend, that Evil Knievel made his famous “attempt” to jump the canyon on a motorcycle and failed miserably. We could have hiked a couple miles to see his ramp, but it was hot and … the whole thing is stupid.
We hung around a while to get our money’s worth. A Canyon Wren kept hopping up on the rocks and singing. I tried to get a close-up video of him singing and then pan away to get the canyon, but he was too quick. I did manage some photos. At the end of the video below, there’s a brief clip of water dripping off a cliff near Perrine Coulee Falls. In the background, you can hear a Canyon Wren singing.
A Northern Rough-winged Swallow posed nicely for us too.
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loxia (crosswise) sinesciuris (without squirrel — because Red Squirrels don’t live in the South Hills and compete with the crossbills for food)
Sawtooth National Forest, Idaho — Diamondfield Jack Campground
Friday, June 18, 2021 — 6:20 am
I’ve been hearing for a while now that ornithologists have identified 10 different types of Red Crossbill. None of them are distinguishable by field marks, but they each have their own call notes. There are some scientists who believe they may all be separate species. Since I have a difficult time distinguishing between pitches, it sounded like a muddle to me, and I wasn’t really looking forward to potential splits.
In 2017, one of the types was designated as a separate species. It was named the Cassia Crossbill for Cassia County, Idaho, where it lives. While most Red Crossbills are nomadic, moving to wherever the pine cone crop is good, this particular type is sedentary, sticking exclusively to the South Hills and Albion Mountains in southern Idaho. They feed on lodgepole pine cones. This pine produces a more steady crop of cones than other pines, providing food year-round. In addition, there are no Red Squirrels in these mountains, so the crossbills don’t have to compete for food.
When I heard about the new species, I figured it was very unlikely I’d ever get to that part of Idaho to see it. But then we rearranged our vacation to get to Salt Lake City and suddenly we weren’t that far away. I decided to book a night in Twin Falls and take a stab at the Cassia Crossbill.
I left my wife sleeping in our hotel at 5:15 am and headed south. It took me about an hour to get to Diamondfield Jack Campground in Sawtooth National Forest, where Cassia Crossbills are most easily found. The drive through the South Hills was stunning, although about 10 miles of the valley had recently been burned by a forest fire.
The campground itself is just a four- or five-acre clearing in the woods. Most of the 10 or so camping spots were filled, and I felt conspicuous walking around staring through my binoculars. Fortunately, at 6:15, when I arrived, nobody was up and about. I parked by the entrance, listened to the recording of the crossbill’s call, and set out.
I had only been there about two minutes and hadn’t gone more than 50 feet from my car when I heard the crossbills. I spotted two high on a pine branch and a third on the very top of a pine about 50 yards away. I didn’t bother trying for photos because the birds were silhouetted against the sky. But I had my lifer.
A few minutes later, two flew down to the base of a pine. One of these was a female and one was a juvenile. Here’s the juvenile.
Soon, a male joined them. He flew down to the ground where he was joined by a female.
The one in the treetop was still there, so I know I saw at least four. I think I saw two different females, but I’m not sure. After about a minute, they flew back into the trees out of sight and hearing. I wandered down the campground and soon heard them again. They were in the pines behind a couple of RVs, and I didn’t want to intrude. I did manage to record their calls, but I didn’t see them again.
This video of some of my poorer photos has the calls playing in the background. It’s the four- and five-note chip that’s repeated every second or so.
I figured people would be up and about soon, and I wanted to take a shot at the Gray Partridges seen recently along my route back to Twin Falls. (I was unsuccessful.) But I had my lifer.
Other types of crossbills occasionally move through the South Hills. Here’s why I think I saw Cassia Crossbills.
I was at the spot were many other birders have seen them recently.
To the very best of my limited ability, I believe the calls of the birds matched the calls I recorded on my phone. I played the recorded calls several times while the birds were calling in the background and they sounded identical to me.
Tim Avery, from Pitta Tours, told me that Cassias outnumber other types in the South Hills by at least 10-1.
The bills on the crossbills I saw looked bigger. This was true in the field, and it’s true when I compare my photos with the photos I’ve taken of Red Crossbills around Colorado Springs.
On the far left of this photo of Diamondfield Jack Campground you can see part of a camper. I actually saw the crossbills to the left of that campsite, giving you an idea of just how close to my car they were. I’ve lightened this photo considerably. It was still very much in the morning shade on this end of the campground.
Even with an hour-long search for Gray Partridges, I was back at our hotel by 9:00 am.
The part of Idaho I drove through this morning was beautiful.
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I’ve long been aware of this park and the history that occurred here, but it was never on my list of go-to places because it was so remote from anywhere I thought I’d ever be. But since we were at Antelope Island, I thought we might as well go up into Idaho since my wife had never been in that state and there was a new bird (the Cassia Crossbill, next post) that I could see. And since the trip to Twin Falls took us within 20 miles of this park, we went.
Considering that the event that happened here could have happened anywhere and that there’s really not much to see or do, it was surprisingly enjoyable.
There’s a visitor center with maybe 10-minutes worth of displays, a movie that almost put me to sleep, and two trains parked on a stretch of track. And a lot of prairie.
We looked at the displays, watched the movie, then waited around for 20 minutes or so to see one of the trains put away for the night. I wandered around and took photos.
In short, when the first railroad was built across the country, the Central Pacific Railroad was given the contract to build from the west, starting in Sacramento. The Union Pacific Railroad was given the contract to build from the east, staring in Omaha. They had to meet somewhere, and here at Promontory Summit is where they met.
The exact meeting point wasn’t agreed on ahead of time, and the two railroads actually built parallel grades for 200 miles (because they got paid by the mile of grade). Congress finally determined this to be the place, and on May 10, 1869, the two tracks were joined by the driving of the golden spike. Cross-country travel, that used to take months, now took a week.
Use of this particular stretch of railroad ceased in 1904. In 1942, the last spike was ceremonially “undriven” and the rails were pulled up to use in the war effort. Here’s a piece of the original rail.
The Central Pacific’s Jupiter and Union Pacific’s No. 119 on display here are fully functional replicas.
When the time came for the ceremonial putting away of the No. 119, a ranger (wrapped in a vest of ice because of the heat) stood in front of the six or seven visitors and told us everything the video and displays had already said. Then the train backed up about 200 yards to a siding, came forward past where we stood watching, stopped, backed up to the siding again, then headed off to the shed.
And that was it. We’d driven 20 miles out of our way to get there and stayed about an hour. I can’t tell you why, but I thought it was cool. We left and headed north to Twin Falls.
