Trip to Western Idaho

For October break this year we went to Western Idaho, mostly to visit Ryan's Great-Grandma who lives out there.

Hyrum created this contraption for the drive out, so he could easily write more of his novel using his phone:

We stayed in Twin Falls on our first night out, then the next morning we went to Craters of the Moon National Park. We first went to the Inferno Cone, which we deemed "Oreo Mountain," since the snow spattered around the black rock made it look a lot like Oreos:

There was a cool view from the top:

Then we went and saw some spatter cones:

We also went down a cool trail amongst an old lava flow:

One of my favorite things we did at Craters of the Moon was check out this cave!

Zane and Ivy became Jr Rangers!

Driving along and back from Craters of the Moon, we saw giant piles of potatoes- I think we were in Idaho at potato harvesting time:

Twin Falls has a beautiful view from the Perrine Bridge:

Me and the littles were too scared to cross the bridge, but Ryan and the big kids enjoyed it!

Then we went to Perrine Coulee falls, which we had a hard time finding the trail head, so we started from this viewpoint:

That trail got way too hard, so we finally found the easier way I had originally intended. It was so cool to go behind these falls!

We saw the Twin Falls temple too!

There were pretty fall leaves everywhere:

The kids loved all the pool time at the hotels that we gave them:

The next morning we drove to Boise and went straight over to the World Center for Birds of Prey. They had some cool birds there:

Everyone got to see how their wing span measures up:

We got to try on some wings too:

Zane found his favorite bird of all time there- the harpy eagle. Him and the harpy eagle stared at each other for quite awhile. For awhile Zane was then saying he wanted to be a birds of prey scientist!

This bird was fun too- it would cock its neck to the side and the kids liked mimicking it:

We enjoyed the bird show too, with this cute little owl that wouldn't stop squawking.

After the bird place, we went into Boise and checked out Freak Alley Gallery, where there's a bunch of cool murals by different artists:

Then we got some ice cream at Stella's downtown:

Next, we headed down to the Boise River and checked out the Greenbelt:

There were a lot of pretty fall leaves there!

We even stepped onto Boise State campus for a bit!

The kids liked their jack-o-lantern face pancakes for dinner one night at iHop:

On Sunday we went and visited Ryan's Great-Grandma in Emmett, Idaho. It was great to see her and spend a few hours with her. It's crazy that the kids know their Great-Great-Grandma!

The kids all played piano for her, and we took her outside on a walk:

Before we left, Grandma gave each kids a gift- the girls each got one of her rings and the boys got a harmonica:

After we visited Great-Grandma, we took a quick look at the Meridian, Idaho temple. It's so pretty!

We also went to the Old Idaho Penitentiary, where we all got to tour around an old prison:

On the way home we got Costa Vida, which all the kids love!

It was a fun trip, and we were especially glad we got the opportunity to see Great-Grandma Beers!