“Push with your legs, don’t pull with your hands!” With the encouragement of my instructor, Sawtooth Mountain Guides’ Matt Scrivner, I had already stretched myself over seemingly impassable humps of stone and up a natural rock ladder. Now I was tied to a rope 40-feet-up, staring at the cliff face for some kind of purchase. But this final climb wasn’t going to happen. I slid back down.
I’m a middle-aged gal with two artificial hips, and it was my first time rock climbing. “You should be proud,” Scrivner said. “Now look around and take in the view.” Splayed out across the scrublands, the ancient formations of southern Idaho’s Castle Rocks State Park shimmered in the afternoon sun.
After Scrivner took me to see the petroglyphs nearby, I went for a drive around the neighboring City of Rocks National Reserve with a ranger named Sophia Bates, who showed me rock art of a different kind. “From 1843 to 1882,” she said, “over a quarter of a million people came through here on the California Trail”—a wagon train route from Missouri to the Golden State. There was once a depot stop right here amid the outcroppings. Inscribed in the granite I saw the names of pioneers: Minnie Wright; A. Freeman, June.12.50; John Calliher 1880.
Bates was also my host at Rock Wren Hideaway, a glamping site that she owns with her husband, Derek, just outside the park. The bathroom was an outhouse and the night chilled my bones, but the big white safari tent was adorably outfitted with leather chairs, beanbags, and a comfy bed. I took a last look at the splashy stars then tucked myself in under piles of blankets and slept like a baby.
Idaho was charming the heck out of me. Until last summer it was the only state in the Lower 48 I hadn’t visited. I’m not sure what took me so long. Perhaps it was the dead-end Idaho town depicted in Napoleon Dynamite or the stereotype that potatoes are the state’s only claim to fame. So I embarked on a weeklong road trip, taking a southerly route from the eastern border to Boise, 350 miles west. It was an opportunity to experience the state’s surprisingly rich human history, which includes the Native Americans who made those petroglyphs at Castle Rocks; the westward-bound pioneers who passed through in the 19th century, some staying to start farms on Idaho’s aquifer-fed soil; and the more recent immigrants, who have transformed the culture of metropolitan Boise.
My journey began at the town of Freedom. Founded in 1879 by Mormons fleeing arrest for polygamy, it straddles the state line. When Idaho police came calling, the Mormons would step into Wyoming. A billboard-size hand-painted map at a turnout on State Highway 34 numbered the attractions along the National Pioneer Historic Byway—114 scenic miles of the Mormons’ route from Utah, which intersects at points with the Oregon Trail. You could still see ruts hardened into the soil beside the highway, impressions of wagon wheels made generations ago.
My first destination on the map was Grays Lake National Wildlife Refuge, which is North America’s largest hardstem bulrush marsh and home to the world’s largest breeding population of sandhill cranes. I gawked through binoculars at the pterodactyl-like birds, with their red brows slanting toward sharp black beaks, as they minced across soggy prairie. Farther on, I came across the Henry Store, established in 1897. It was packed with historical curiosities: Idaho’s oldest barber chair; portraits of Buffalo Bill and Abraham Lincoln shot into tin by sharpshooters who were hawking Parker guns; a beer license from 1934, the year after Prohibition ended. Shopkeeper Whitney Engeler talked me into buying dime-store candy like Gold Mine nugget bubble gum and Owyhee Idaho Spud, a marshmallow, chocolate, and coconut confection with the tagline The Candy Bar That Makes Idaho Famous.
