My friend Lyle drove our camper van/home on wheels along a stretch of dry, arid, high-desert highway in Southern Idaho, and the miles and miles of scrubby sage bush seemed like they would never end. This wasn't the Idaho I was expecting; I had seen photos of the fearsome jagged teeth of the Sawtooth Mountains rising into clouds, bucolic scenes of dirt hiking paths weaving through primordial forests, and portraits of cozy couples lounging in natural hot springs with the vast canvas of mountains and blue sky painted behind them.
This road we were on was none of that. For the several hours we drove east from Boise toward Craters of the Moon National Monument, the state looked more like arid West Texas than it did those photos I had drooled over for months.
I had never been to Idaho, and I was mildly obsessed with visiting the state after another friend described it as “one of the last truly untamed states in the US
