The 2015 Spring Roadtrip: West Yellowstone to Boise

This post is going to be short and sweet. You're probably asking yourselves, "Why is he going to Boise?" Good question. Once I'd made the decision to go to Grand Teton and Yellowstone NPs, the pull from an unexpected quarter kind of took on a life of its own. In December 2012 I found the gravesite of a great, great uncle who had apparently gone missing after the Civil War. There are several posts on this blog site recounting the details. Still, as far as I know, no one in the family had ever visited the gravesite. I had found pictures online of the Fort Boise military Cemetery and reposted a few of them when I was writing about this uncle. I found the terrain interesting and thought that I might at some point get a chance to photograph the area myself. So, in planning my road trip, I found myself routed to Yellowstone and looking for an alternate route home, not wanting to re-cover ground I had just seen. Perusing Google Maps it was obvious that I was going to cross into Idaho at some point, probably from Yellowstone's west entrance. That's when the pull started. . . 356 miles to Boise. Well, having come this far, another 6 hour drive hardly seemed critical, and I am on a photo mission. I shifted my third night motel from Idaho Falls to Boise and my fourth night to Cedar City, effecting a bypass of Salt Lake City and set up staging for another visit to Zion NP.

There are some nice mountains between Yellowstone and Boise, but after the last few days I thought I'd be better off if I stuck to the Snake River basin. With the skies I had for this trip, I thought the relative simplicity of the plains landscapes would be more than satisfactory. And, so they were. The shot above,  near St Anthony, Fremont County, ID shows the skies had lost none of their drama.

About halfway to Boise I passed Craters of the Moon National Monument (above). What appears to be turned earth in the middle of the image is actually a lava field. In the 60s some of the lunar astronauts trained here not because it was actually like the moon's surface (the name was coined in the early part of the century in a random remark about the area's desolate nature), but because it was easy to show them just how to search for target moon rocks when they got up there. The skies notwithstanding, I didn't expect to find anything there I'd want to photograph. Keep on trucking. . .

I found Fort Boise Military Cemetery right where I expected to, in Ada County, ID. . . just over the hill and about 2 1/2 miles distant from the state capitol. I'd been hoping all day for the clouds to stick around, but thin out a little bit too, anticipating lots of color and a great backdrop for the cemetery images. By the time I'd been in Boise a few hours I decided I probably wasn't going to see that color. My guess is that the clouds extended far enough west that the setting sun couldn't reach the high clouds over Boise which would have provided the color. Oh well, the best laid plans. . .

Arthur Conlin, son of John Conlin and Sarah McAllister Conlin;

b. 13 Aug 1840, Augusta Twp, Carroll Co, Ohio; d. 06 Apr 1904, Fort Boise, Ada Co, Idaho.

Pvt, Co I, 86th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Civil War

Pvt, Co B, 170th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Civil War

Looking west from Fort Boise Military Cemetery towards the federal and state government complex which includes the VA Hospital, Idaho State Veterans Home, Fort Boise Park, Idaho State University, and the US Geological Survey - Idaho Water Science Center. The state capital is probably out of frame on the right, on the other side of the hill.

I hung around for a couple hours till I was sure the skies weren't going to suddenly light up in a symphony of color.

No promises had been made, so I wasn't really disappointed. The cemetery was as peaceful and pleasant as anyone could expect and I appreciated the opportunity to sit quietly, think, and listen to the birds sing.

One of the things that crossed my mind sitting out here was that I still might find more information about Arthur, who had been a member of the Phil Sheridan camp of the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans organization along the lines of the VFW, I believe) in Boise before he died.

I need to see whether there's any way to search, or have searched on my behalf, GAR records which are probably archived by the Idaho State Historical Society. I had found some records online, but they were only documentation of the GAR "encampments", annual reunions for Civil War veterans.