Twin Falls, Idaho – Shoshane Falls
As I drove into Jerome, Idaho there was a light misty snow falling and things were getting a bit slippery on the roads. I was happy to check into the Best Western and rest for the night rather than trying to drive further. In the morning, everything was covered with hoarfrost and a heavy fog reduced visibility significantly. The temperature was only 20F so I decided to put on my tourist hat and spend some time visiting the tourist attractions of Twin Falls. As you enter Twin Falls form the north, you cross the Snake River Canyon – a pleasant surprise that I wasn’t expecting.
After stopping to photograph the local Church of the Latter Day Saints structure and some of the hoar frost covered trees and bushes, I headed over to famous Shoshone Falls. From all of the pictures which I had seen, I was expecting quite a wonderful falls and hoping that the low temperatures would have created some interesting ice scenes as well. The clerk at the Best Western had sort of warned me that there wouldn’t be too much water flowing over the falls at this time of the year. Even with that warning, I was still surprised when I arrived at the visitor parking lot and looked over the edge. THe massive rock face was almost dry as bone!
The lake above the falls serves as a source of power for the generating station at this location so, during low flow wqinter months most of the water is diverted to the power station leaving not much more than a trickle flowing over the “Falls”. Interesting to see the underlying geology of the falls laid bare and fully exposed but I would have preferred to see a bit more water flowing over the falls :-).
Having seen the famous local point of tourist interest, I headed out of town toward my destination, Las Vegas, Nevada. What a surprise, when I got about twenty miles south of Twin Falls and escaped from the fog. The road ahead was suddenly bathed in sunlight, clear blue sky was overhead and almost instantly the outside temperature climbed form 20F to near 50F by the time that I reached the Nevada border.
