Per our last post, we had just arrived at one of our favorite places: Henrys Lake State Park in Island Park, Idaho. It’s such a beautiful place- surrounded by mountains and next to a lake!

Day 7 of our trip, we decided to go hiking in the Teton-Bridgerton National Forest. On our way down to the Tetons, we drove on the Mesa Scenic Byway. This would take us to 3 different trails in the Targhee National Forest. We hiked the Upper Mesa Falls, Nature Trail, and the Lower Mesa Trail. The Upper Mesa trail led us right up to the upper waterfall, it was so beautiful! The sun created a rainbow, there was snow in the background, and it was just a gorgeous day! The nature trail took us above the lower falls- not a great view but a nice little walk. The Lower Mesa trail was mostly just a viewing point of the lower falls from the opposite side we had just been on. When we were here two years ago, we never knew this was here! Such a good find (way to go, Scott!)

We continued on our trek down to the Tetons. Our goal was to hike up to Sky Lake, a supposed dog friendly trail leading to an alpine lake. The website we found told us to park at Phillip’s Canyon Trailhead, very near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We parked and started our hike. Once we found a trail map, we realized that the website misled us. Technically, we could have made it to Sky Lake from the trail we were on, but that would have taken us on a 20+ mile round trip hike.

We were NOT prepared to do that today.

We hiked the trail as far as we felt we wanted, then turned back. Overall, we probably hiked 6-7 miles on that trail. It was really beautiful, and we didn’t really see many people at all hiking!

On our drive back to Henrys Lake, we drove through Jackson Hole, Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park. We couldn’t get out and do any hiking, as dogs are not allowed on trails in either park. However, we enjoyed driving through and seeing the sights 🙂

We drove back to camp, had some dinner and a fire, and enjoyed the evening.

Day 8, we wanted to have a slow start to our day. We had a nice breakfast and hung out at Henrys Lake. Just before noon, we headed to Harriman State Park. However, it turns out that this is a nature preserve, and dogs are not welcome. I found another hike that was more south, and close-ish to a Walmart (we needed some groceries). The hike was called Henrys Fork Greenway (North). The first half of the walk was directly next to an open sewage plant- not great. The second half took us across a marshy wetland. We saw a bald eagle’s nest with a baby in it, lots of plants, and ended up under a railroad bridge next to the river! Overall, I would not hike this trail again, but at least we got away from the sewage plant for a little bit?

We headed down to the Walmart to grab some groceries. However, we arrived and were told they were closed due to a power outage. Just our luck! I found another store called Albertson’s, which I guess is pretty popular out here. It did the trick and we were able to get what we needed and get out. We headed back to Henrys Lake- and upon arrival decided to hike the Henrys Lake Trail that did a loop around the campground and surrounding area. We hiked through sage bushes, HUGE aspen trees, and next to the lake! Scott was convinced he heard elk bugling in the distance, but this “city” boy hasn’t heard many cows moo 😉

Day 9- this was probably my personal favorite day we had at Henrys Lake. Scott found a hike nearby in the Targhee National Forest. We took a rough dirt road back to the trail head. The hike was AMAZING! We didn’t hike to the top of the mountain like Scott had wanted (mostly due to a creek we couldn’t cross without getting pretty wet, which I didn’t want to do), but we did about 6-7 miles into the wilderness, only seeing a couple people while there. We even tested Adrian with some off leash time, which she did amazingly well at! No wildlife spotted other than our two pups.

We then headed to another trail not too far from camp- Big Springs Interpretive Trail. 2.5 miles out and back, along this really cool river. The name Big Springs come from the fact that this river quite literally comes from a big spring under the mountain side. We watched as the water seemed to just bubble out from the rock. It was awesome! We also saw our FIRST moose, some herons, a couple sandhill cranes, and tons of massive fish.

Day 10 would be our last full day in the area. I had seen some video talking about Shoshone Falls being a “cannot miss” waterfall. I looked it up on google maps and saw some of the most incredible pictures! I told Scott I wanted to go see it. It was about 3 hours away, but Scott wanted to go to the Craters of the Moon National Preserve, so we could do a kind of loop in southern Idaho to see both.

Shoshone Falls is located in Twin Falls, Idaho. At 212 feet tall and 900 feet wide, it is boasted as the “Niagra of the West.” It is located on the Snake River. To enter the area, there was a $5 fee. This would give you closer access to the waterfall as well as access to the lake that was above the waterfall. As soon as we parked and saw the waterfall, we both kind of looked at each other with some disappointment. Yes, the falls were HUGE and tons of water was pouring out. However, there was a dam put it right before the actual falls that controlled the natural flow of the water. So, water was only going over half of the actual waterfall at the time we were there. Neither Scott nor I realized that we were going to look at a dammed up waterfall. So, it was cool to look at, but also disappointing as it was not a natural thing to look at. Still beautiful, but not what we wanted to have seen.

We took the pups on a short walk (the canyon rim trail was an old paved road that is no longer in use, so we didn’t walk too far as we didn’t want the pups feet on the hot pavement that long). We jumped back in the truck and headed up to the Craters of the Moon.

Before we left Twin Falls, we decided to stop and grab lunch. We stopped at Koto Brewing Company (we have found that pretty much most breweries are dog-friendly, which is not the case of most restaurants). The food was SO good- I had the Koto Burger and Scott had a chicken sandwich. They also brought our dogs a couple bowls of water which was so nice! After some good food, we were ready to continue our travels.

Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve was protected in 1924 by President Calvin Coolidge who proclaimed Craters of the Moon to be “a weird and scenic landscape, peculiar to itself.” I could not put it any better. Craters of the Moon is an old lava flow formed by a fissure in the Earth called the Great Rift. Nearly 15,000 years ago, lava began to well up to produce this ocean of rock we see today. The most recent eruption occurred around 2,000 years ago, and scientists believe future occurrences are likely.

Unfortunately, dogs are not allowed to walk on trails here either! Which seemed weird because all of the trails were pavement, but who are we to question it? We did the 7 mile loop drive, stopping and getting out to look at different things. One of us staying in the car with the pups while the other did a little walk, and vice versa. There is plenty to look at between the lava rock, spatter cones, and cinder cones!

We headed back to camp to start getting some things packed up to leave in the morning.

Day 10- we are leaving Henrys Lake and heading to Piney Campground in Anaconda, Montana. Before we left, we decided to take the Henrys Lake trail one more time- taking the short cut and hiking more in the aspen trees than the sage bushes. It was just so beautiful in there!

We drove through Ennis, Montana, which seemed like a really cool little town that I would like to come back and visit some day! We arrived to our campground later afternoon. Once again, an awesome spot to camp. Our site was right next to the lake! We let the pups go in the lake to play, chopped some firewood and ate a nice meal.

Next post- our time was short at Piney Campground, but very memorable!