Shoshone Ice Caves

In southern Idaho in the nothingness of the desert where the closest civilization seems to military encampments and nuclear power plants, there lies the Shoshone Ice Caves. The bright red building that houses the entrance to the caves is oddly circus and very 50s. Take the tour if you're in the area. The ridiculously young tour guide will lead you past decaying sculputures of Shoshone Indians and tells you the history of the caves with remarks like, "so it's pretty neat". Then you climb down the stone-carved stairs into the cave where the temperature remains below freezing all year round (even though the desert above is over 100 degrees in summer). Upon squeezing through the narrow opening into the cave, you climb down a few stone steps and then onto a rickety bridge system that looks like it has not been upgraded since the 50s. The best part is that unlike other beautiful caves with ice sculpture, this cave's only attraction is that it's cold. It is a really big, ugly hole, with a very deep slab of muddy ice. All told, it was a very funny little tour.

Wild West Lives!

What I love about driving through the West is that it still has small towns that are time capsules of yesteryear. Well, NV is an example of one such Western town with an old school main street. Gotta love it.

Report Shooting

No matter where you cross the stateline into Nevada, you will be greeted by bullet-ridden signs. On the highway we drove past several road signs that said: "Report Highway Shootings at xxx-xxx-xxxx". So I guess people driving around in Nevada have a tendancy to drive and shoot.

Metropolis

Just outside Wells, NV there is the ghost town of Metropolis. It's a former Mormon town that was put out of business when the rights to water were disputed by a town downstream. That followed by a plague of crickets and a cholera outbreak killed the town. It was once a booming town with a school and a hotel. It even had a loop on the train route. The archway is what remains of the school.

The road to Metropolis was beyond rutted out and since we were in the middle of the desert, several miles from all civilization, we drove very slowly. Somehow we missed the initial turn off down the gravel pitted road and seeing the arch in the distance, we grabbed the nearest cow path/mud-running tracks and headed out. It was an insane drive. Somehow we made it out of the area before the sun went down.