Gooding, ID to Burley, ID

Today was our highest mileage day since the tour began. We put in about 85 miles, which is a bit more than scheduled. We had a few extra things today that were interesting and enjoyable. First we were invited to stop at a large diary in the Jerome, ID area to have a cold water and milk break and we were welcome to do a self tour of the milking parlor/factory. It was the Ted Miller diary. I believe he is a transplanted dairy farmer from California. There are many dairymen that have done that. Apparently, their dairies became surrounded by growing suburbs and they decided to cash out and restart in Idaho. The dairy we toured milked 1,700 cows, three times a day. The milking area has a slowly rotating platform that the cows enter on and 50 cows at a time are on the platform being milked. That is just a bit more than our family farm milked as I was growing up. We milked 20-30 cows in total.

Our second stop was a great surprise. As we looked out over the landscape, it was miles and miles of beautiful irrigated farm fields. Suddenly, we came across a giant canyon, with the Snake River at the bottom. You could not see it coming until we were right next to it. As we entered Twins Falls, we crossed the Snake again via a huge bridge and the canyon was again below us. As we watched, a guy jumped off the middle of the bridge and parachuted to the bank way below.

Our third stop was a great lunch stop provided by the Twin Falls Reformed Church. They had subs, chips, cold milk, watermelon, and ice cream bars. Twin Falls appears to be a growing city and has many new homes on the outskirts were the church is located.

Our next stop was unscheduled, but only added 4 miles. It was the view the Shoshone Falls in the Snake River canyon east of Twin Falls. It was a bike ride down a deep canyon road to view the falls and a very tough clime back out again. It was worth the climb, as the falls were beautiful and wider than normal this time of year from the heavy earlier snowfall in the mountains.

The dinner horn just went off, so I will close. Everyone is a bit beat tonight from the higher miles and heat and dryness. In addition to the miles, we had a total of almost 3,000 uphill climbing today. Fortunately, the wind was at our back for most of the day. It was close to 3:00 by the time I got us settled in our new camp at the Burley, ID high school.

Love to all, P & J.