Twin Falls Trolley

So Spake Mo…

Below roared the thunderous waters of the Shoshone Falls like a scale model of the great Niagra filling the space between sheer canyon walls with billows of fine mist.


Such a contrast between the violent beauty of the water, the implied threat of the deeply cut bedrock and that ethereally soft spray… and then came the rainbow that ricocheted from it. A beautiful moment.

As we backed away from the viewing platform, we came to another contrast: the naked heat and drought of the Idaho desert mere feet from so much water. Three generations of us climbed the path up the canyon wall taking refuge from the sun in the occasional shallow cave scraped out by those waters so very long ago.

Absorbed with the vivid colors of the desert, my father and I eventually fell behind the rest of the group near an unnatural arrangement of rocks along the path. That, said my father, was one of two staircases that once led down to a tidy little park with a series of small pools overlooking the falls. He said that in the distant past, the city of Twin Falls had had a trolley running from the county courthouse to this remote spot. Parties with picnic baskets in hand descended these stairs to take their easement while enjoying the natural majesty of the falls.

The park and the stone steps have since returned to nature. But every once in a while as the city of Twin Falls grows and evolves, reminders of the old trolley are found—bits of track unearthed as new roads replace the old, little memories of life as it was.

So Spake Me…

Alright, I know I promised this space would be dedicated to more information regarding the legends from Spectre, but sometimes you just hit tasty gems in places you’ve been a thousand times and you’ve just got to share them.

The Shoshone Falls were on full blast when the family and I journeyed back to Idaho last week and my husband, who had recently been to Niagra, couldn’t believe I’d never taken him to see this before! How do you tell a guy who is looking at this triumph of nature and engineering that the Shoshone Trickle is more what I was accustomed to finding down here.

Of course that is not the only tasty tidbit my parents had to relay, so stay tuned for more…

On the space elevator side, just a quick note: National Geographic recently conned me out $5.71 with promises of an article on space elevators. Nrgh. A picture and puny little paragraph. Repeat after me: Impulse buying is bad. Impulse buying is bad!