The Snake River Canyon

Since it's a travel day and we're trying to do another marathon drive, (WE? You mean ME...clarifies Eldy.)  Eldy LIKES to drive and we are trying to have a little time to sightsee on the way down to the family reunion in Sedona, AZ. So we are covering another four hundred miles or more today to get that much closer to Zion and Bryce Canyon in Utah and who know what else? The weather is beautiful, dry, sunny, and getter hotter as we go. We climbed to a height of about 5500 feet today....the landscape is now brown, tan, and a little bit of green. We stopped for fuel at a Flying J off interstate 84 and got caught in a construction zone that didn't let us get back on I-84 East so we took a detour and it worked out great!

There happened to be a visitor's center on the way into town where we were trying to do a turnaround to get back on the highway. The visitor center just happened to be on the Snake River and there was a fantastic bridge there. Apparently, a lot of crazy guys who are big time risk takers think it's a pretty cool bridge, too, because they were JUMPING OFF THE BRIDGE (486 feet high) with nothing more than a little tiny parachute strapped to their backs. They are called BASE jumpers which stands for Building, Antenna, Span, Earth jumpers, whatever the heck that means. This bridge, the I.B. Perrine Bridge, is a popular destination spot for jumpers from all over the world. Eldy talked to a couple of the jumpers, but they were foreigners and very difficult to understand. The jumpers were aiming for a  leetle, itty bitty target down below on land. More power to 'em! This one jumper has a camera attached to his helmet, can you imagine the video coming down?! Here's the target area they were trying to land close to. It's marked with a little flag....

This is also the very same area Evel Knievel tried to jump in 1974 in his sky cycle. There is nothing but a dirt ramp left of his attempt and it is on private property, so we didn't see that, but we saw the fantastic views of the bridge and the canyon...WOW! There are some fantastic falls here to view, the Shoshone Falls, which are 50 feet higher than Niagra Falls, but we did not see them. They have started irrigating fields so the falls are greatly reduced once that starts happening. The Snake River was extremely GREEN...not sure why...maybe the mineral content of the rocks has something to do with the color of the water, but it looked like pea soup! If you look closely, I think you can see some kayakers down below, floating down the river. They are the little orange dots in the first photo at the top. Kind of gives you a perspective of how little we really are in this big beautiful world of ours.....

This is what I love about full time traveling in an RV...You have a destination in mind, but the flexibility to stop, smell the roses, explore, then get going again. It was a little annoying to get stuck in traffic, have difficulties getting back on the route, but look what we saw when we took the time to see what was there while we were sidetracked!  Loved it!

We made it to Utah this evening....staying in Nephi, Utah, off I-15 south. There is a big stampede going on this weekend. Horses? Rodeo?..Interesting, but not sure if we'll stay another day or not...stay tuned and you'll find out where Eldo is tomorrow.....