| Of the two largest towns in southeast Idaho, IDAHO FALLS makes a better overnight stop than down-at-heel Pocatello, being approximately 100 miles from Craters of the Moon to the west and Yellowstone and Grand Teton to the northeast. The first sign you see of this likeable but quiet community, as you approach along I-15, sixty miles north of Pocatello, is its seven-tier wedding-cake Mormon temple, rising from the flat Snake River Valley. The falls for which the town was named are now entirely tamed, with a long, low concrete dam running diagonally across the river very near downtown – but they form a pleasant focus for the greenbelt of parkland that lines both banks of this agricultural town. Much of the country en route to Yellowstone is every bit as spectacular as in the national parks, and far less crowded; the magnificent Mesa Falls, for example, are a worthwhile brief detour along Hwy-47, roughly forty miles short of West Yellowstone.
|
