Like rivers roaring over waterfalls, so are the days (and nights) of our lives.

Like rivers roaring over waterfalls, so are the days (and nights) of our lives.
No, hopefully our lives aren't like soap operas, especially when we are on vacation.

Dwain! Megan! We've been caught by the paparazzi. Break! Break! Break!

You are the master of your own ship, pal. There are lots of people who fall into troubled waters and don't have the guts or the knowledge or the ability to make it to shore. They have nobody to blame but themselves. - Evel Knievel

Actually, we've landed at Twin Falls, Idaho, and this is Shoshone Falls. This is sometimes referred to as the Niagara Falls of the West. And those buttes in the background definitely pinpoint our location.

It was a heck of an adventure to reach our destination. Or as Evel Knievel said: 'I decided to fly through the air and live in the sunlight and enjoy life as much as I could."

We crossed two railroad tracks in downtown Shoshone.  There was a platform to stand on and watch the trains come and go. We were impressed by the murals that were painted on rock store walls in many of the small western towns. Signs directed us to our destination.

No, we didn't stop at this "roadside attraction," complete with large Indian, dinosaur and ice cave, but I'll bet Clark Griswald would have.

When is the last time a sign directed you to a cave that could serve as a civil defense shelter?

Uh, we think we'll pass on this tourist attraction. No cars in the parking lot.

Finally, we've reached Twin Falls.

Hey! Over here. That is the Perrine Bridge. It supposedly is one of the few artificial structures where base jumping is allowed. If we had the time, Dwain could have strapped on a parachute and jumped off the bridge. Yee-hah!

I decided to fly through the air and live in the sunlight and enjoy life as much as I could. - Evel Knievel

That's the famous Snake River below us. See the green on the far side of the river? That is a golf course. Neat, huh?

I learned one thing from jumping motorcycles that was of great value on the golf course, the putting green especially: Whatever you do, don't come up short. - Evel Knievel

Megan is pointing to a map that locates the exact point where Evel Knievel tried to jump the mile-wide Snake River in his rocket-powered sky cycle on September 8, 1974. Too bad the launch site is on private property. :(

You can't say you're going to jump the Grand Canyon and then jump some other canyon. - Evel Knievel

Holy Cow!! Could this be the spirit of Evel Knievel walking toward that far away bluff where he launched his sky cycle ... or is it a couple of college kids from New Mexico? Actually the girl is riding on the boy's shoulder and both are wrapped in a blanket to stay warm. Oh, to be that young ... again!

Idaho has literally hundreds of waterfalls. We spent the night in Idaho Falls but passed on snapping an image of that falls. We drove past roads leading to both the Upper Mesa Falls and Lower Mesa Falls.

Our destination was Shoshone Falls, and we played a lot.

Here's a panoramic view that bends and distorts the image so we can see Shoshone Falls and the buttes in the background along with the Snake River rushing on past through Twin Falls.

I have my tombstone already. A tombstone company in the East gave it to me when I jumped Snake Canyon. My plot is in Montana. - Evel Knievel

See the stilt people (those crazy/funny college kids) in front of Megan? We walked and climbed all over the park to see the falls from different angles.  It was also a good way to keep our blood pumping.  Can you tell it was cold?

This was our first view of Shoshone Falls. Time to keep walking and look for a better vantage point.

Maybe if we walk up this hill we can get a better view.

Nope, still not the right location.

Finally, an unobstructed view.  We could literally feel the mist rising from the falls. This looks like a postcard from Idaho.

Whew, time to take a break before we hike up the stairs and out of here.

Bobbleheads Megan and Dwain anyone? We didn't think so.

If honeymooners can kiss at Niagara Falls, I guess we can smooch at the Niagara Falls of the West. And we did.  Twice.

Megan and Dwain

I decided to fly through the air and live in the sunlight and enjoy life as much as I could. - Evel Knievel

Time keeps on slippin ... slippin into the future ... let my spirit carry me.

When is the last time you saw one of these cigarette slot machines. This machine says to put 45 cents in the slot - No Canadian Coins ... Please. Normally, we wouldn't touch that machine, we agreed. But Megan, who thinks cigarettes are vile things, couldn't look away from packages of Pall Mall, Camel, Tareton, Lucky Strike Menthol, Kool, Salem, Viceroy and Kent. Marlboro and Winston slots were empty. Hum, wonder when the last time cigarettes came out of that vending machine ... way before video games.

We're having lunch in the Wells Fargo Steak House in downtown Virginia City, Montana. Eating in the old stagecoach stop was like dining in a museum.

 

The dining area area was spacious, with only this couple and a table with young boys crowded around a table. They were well-behaved, and not at the bar in the saloon in the adjoining room. Notice that the tables in the front don't have tablecloths. I guess they were for the lunch crowd.

It may be lunch, but Megan insisted we sit at this table ... near the stove. We were freezing.

That's one reason Megan ordered a big bowl of hearty Loaded Potato Soup. See the extra spoon? We have become so accustomed to sharing, that it's automatic.

The decaf also warmed up her bones, and she didn't share it. But the special mug held the warmth. That cup was thrown pottery, made in Virginia City by the owner of the restaurant.

Megan picked out the soup, Dwain picked out the entree, the Sluice Box Salmon Sandwich with red and green chips.

 

Since we had shared the soup, sandwich and chips, we had room for a big piece of Dutch Apple Pie with one scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream and another scoop of Huckleberry Ice Cream. Can you believe they had Huckleberry Ice Cream? How could we refuse such an offer? Yummy!

Our server, a University of Montana student at Bozeman, said this is her second summer to work in a restaurant in Virginia City. The owner of Wells Fargo Steak House owns a second restaurant and she works in both.
Last summer, she drove back and forth between Bozeman and Virginia City. That is one long drive.
This summer, she's staying in a cabin provided by the state of Montana. She said the restaurant owner told her he had stayed in one of the cabins years ago when he was a kid and worked summers in Virginia City.
He had fond memories of those carefree years.

This row of tiny cabins is less than a block below the main street through town.

Here are a few more scenes we found interesting, before moving on down the highway.

These two homes were built in the 1860s or 1870s. They physically connected, but were never part of the same enterprise, kind of like apartments or businesses. Walls separated the two house made of logs on the left and house made of sawn lumber on the right. But they were both considered "spacious Victorian luxury."

This Methodist Church was built in 1875, and it served as a school gymnasium in the 1930s before closing. The building is up the street from the Victorian homes, and the Episcopal church is on the corner of the next block.

 

Virginia City was the cornerstone for 8,000 - 10,000 miners and the resulting business people along Alder Gulch in the 1860s- 1870s. Bill Fairweather discovered gold in Alder Gulch and died August 25,1875. His funeral August 28, 1875, was the first service in that new Methodist Church.

... Then we have this Victorian mansion built by George Thexton in 1884. After his wife, Nancy Redhead Thexton, and their two oldest sons had died, he moved to the Thexton Ranch that he put together on the Madison River outside Ennis, Montana.

This looks like an old postcard with a picture of Sim Ferguson outside his cabin in 1945. What a great picture.

Here is that same cabin today. It dates back to the 1870s as a prospector's cabin. It's about a block off the main street, and is an excellent example of historic preservation carried out by the state of Montana. Some farsighted folks started this effort almost 70 years ago, and made many of our experiences possible earlier this summer.

I have no doubt the man buried in this plot deserved this headstone. It reads: "Madison County's Tribute to Madison County's Friend." The headstone shows Dr. Ira C. Smith was a Mason and friend when he died in 1884.

Enough ghost towns for now. Although they're fascinating, that's not all we did on our vacation. Time to set the GPS for another adventure.

Megan and Dwain

Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'
Into the future
Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'
Into the future
- Steve Miller Band

The only dimension that separates us from these people and events, as they happened, is time.

More than 110 years ago, some residents of Virginia City, Montana, realized the significance of five unmarked graves in Boot Hill Cemetery. They knew bad guys were in the graves, but who was in each grave was the question?

 Names are important, Woody Guthrie said so.

This trip starts as Megan walks on the wide, wooden sidewalks along the only paved road in Virginia City, Montana, a community that has celebrated 150 years of "civilized" history.

Take a good look at this plain, old building. The walls have 150 years of stories to tell, including plans made by the Vigilantes as they plotted and schemed to make the Western town and roads leading into town safer for innocent people unaware of robbers lying in wait.

The dirt road to Boot Hill is clearly marked and passes the crumbling walls of an old dug-out, cobblestone home.  We just wish that we could have taken a peek inside.

We wondered about these plain, plank headstones and why everybody died on the same day - Jan. 14th, 1864. Then we noticed, "Hanged," which made us wonder why ... and on the same day.

The key to this lineup is the first grave, "Clubfoot George" Lane. 

Apparently, residents knew the order of burial, they didn't have a starting point.

One of the "Vigilantes" responsible for hanging the men, pointed to a grave 40 years after the deed, and said Clubfoot George was buried in that spot.

The city ordered the grave exhumed in October 1907. They were surprised to find that the outlaws had been buried in caskets, and the skeletal foot bones of Clubfoot George, who claimed to be innocent to the very end, verified his identity.

A piece of the casket and those foot bones apparently are on display in a glass case in the Virginia City museum.  We did not have time to tour the museum.

Double creepy!

According to this sign, 20 miles up the road at Robber's Roost, those five road agents were members of the "Innocents." They hung out at Pete Daly's roadhouse and scouted travelers to rob after they left this, basically motel and restaurant.

Pete Daly arrived at this location in 1863 and built the original cabin and stage coach stop, where road agents are reported to have hung out.

Pete Daly built this new two-story, log stagecoach station in 1865-66. It is another historic project being preserved by the state and local historical societies.

All we got were pictures and impressions.

Travelers could get a meal and night's rest 145 years ago, and stagecoach drivers got fresh horses.

A place like this must have felt like heaven after a long stagecoach ride across the high plains and through the mountains ...

Megan is still shaking her head at the idea of a four-hole outhouse. Talk about getting to know your fellow travelers intimately, this is a little too chummy for our mores. I think the big metal contraption was for a stove. So who lit the fire? Did they use the methane gas for heat?

Yes, Megan's using the wooden footbridge to cross a little stream across the property and walk through tall, green grass.

Sorry Megan. The door's locked up, but you can look inside the cabin Frank Bird Linderman built for his family in 1896 at Brandon, a community above Sheridan, Montana.

Frank Linderman wanted to move his family away from Butte, Montana. That town was lawless with robberies daily. People were robbed for their lunches.
He moved to the Ruby Valley so that his children could have the acquaintance of trees, grass and flowers.
He wrote that his youngest child, 3-year-old Wilda, was so moved by the sight of grass that she cried. She was afraid that walking on it would kill the grass, which she believed were flowers.

Frank and Minnie Linderman's log cabin was preserved and moved to this site in 2010 by the Friends of the Sheridan Library and Virginia City Preservation Society.

"Who invented this damn gate? I'm hung up."

Megan laughed, "Dummy, they have them in high-end department stores and hotels. Don't you know how to operate this thing."

Time to drive back across the abandoned railroad tracks, that the Earth is trying to reclaim.

Back at Boot Hill ...

We're sitting beside the headstone for William and Clara Dalton. They moved to Virginia City, Montana, in 1863 and died of natural causes in January 1864, leaving four children. A grandchild erected this headstone.  To us, this leaves many unanswered questions like what became of their four orphaned children?

Historians believe many more unmarked graves are on Boot Hill. Epidemics took lots of people and they were buried here. How sad that is. Names are important, and they are lost forever. Here's J.W. Fouts, 1864, that's all we know. No birth date, but this confirms his existence. That's a starting point.

One writer surmised, that we're standing at the actual point in space where energetic events took place. These people actually existed. The only dimension that separates us from these people and events, as they happened, is time. And that's about the only selling point for Virginia City, Montana, in 2014.  We are glad we went. 

Don't you find that mind-boggling? Where did that energy go?

Megan and Dwain

I've got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle
As I go ridin' merrily along
And they sing, 'Oh ain't you glad you're single
And that song ain't so very far from wrong.
- Joseph J. Lilly, Frank Loesser, 1942