2013, November: Idaho Falls, First Impressions

I visited Idaho Falls for the first time last week. Christian is already there, settled in a wee studio apartment on a "numbered street" in town (apparently that's a cool thing) and loving his job. My first impression was quite bleak. The weather was cold and the sun and the mountains were nowhere to be seen. On closer inspection, however, I quickly fell in love. The historic downtown is artsy and quaint, with great restaurants, coffee shops, and artist-made benches. The Snake River winds through town surrounded by the Greenbelt, with walking/biking trails, views of the river and falls, and more awesome benches. For a small-ish town (population is almost 60,000) there is a lot of culture. I explored the Museum of Idaho, The Art Museum of Eastern Idaho, and the Idaho Falls Arts Council, which includes two art galleries and the Colonial Theater.

House-hunting in Rigby, 20 minutes north of Idaho Falls gave me the distant view of mountains that I needed, and we found great old farmhouses surrounded by fields, fruit trees, and potato silos. (Side note, Rigby is known as the birthplace of television, due to famous high school student Philo Taylor Farnsworth, who drew up his first blue-prints of a television while he was a resident.)

The best part of the entire experience for me though was driving up to the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park. We couldn't go into the park since the roads were closed with drifting snow, but I needed to prove to myself that it is close enough for a day trip, and it is! On a less-snowy day I can be at Old Faithful in two hours (the same amount of time as my current commute, one-way), drinking coffee at the Inn, wandering the boardwalks around the hot springs, or hiking through the forest. My absolute favorite place in the world.

Christian's new workplace - the Caribou-Targhee National Forest - is beautiful too, especially in the snow, though we only peeked at a fraction of its 3 million acres.

It looks like I'll be making the big move several months earlier than planned, since I got a great job and they need me to start in January (more on that soon). This is terrifying because there is so much to be done, never mind the 2,200 mile drive in the middle of winter with five cats, but I cannot wait to get back out there to continue our western wilderness adventure. You can see all of my photos from this first visit on Flickr.

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