Mike and I went on a road trip to Lewiston, ID. The purpose of the trip was to see Dennis DeYoung from the Styx and Rick Springfield in concert. Both were good concerts. However, I don't care for the drinking, smoking and rudeness of some of the drunken people. Minus that, it was a good concert with good music.
The Saturday we were there, we went to Hells Gate State Park and found a hike to go on.
A long time ago (hundreds of thousands of years) lava crept up to the earths surface and made some unique basalt rock formations. I saw a picture similar to the one below on a brochure and asked a ranger how to get to the place. The ranger pulled out an "unofficial" map of the hiking trails and showed us which direction to go. He said to stay along the Snake River and the path may be a little weedy. That didn't seem to be a problem for us.
The hike was nice and peaceful till we got to the trail where we started seeing the cliff side as you can see below. It felt like the rocks could fall any moment. We tried to convince ourselves that any rocks that had fallen along the trail were from a long time ago. However, you could clearly see that the rocks were freshly broken off. I started to get creeped out. I felt like any sudden movement or loud noise could start a rock slide.
We slowly made our way through this area and found the weedy path that the ranger was talking about. After making it through one section, Mike and I noticed that there were spider webs on either side of us with huge spiders. Some of the webs had caught their prey and others had spiders patiently waiting. That creepy feeling was getting worse and made us feel like we were in a scene that belonged in Indiana Jones.
I finally started to see our destination. The basalt rock formations I saw from the brochure.
It was beautiful! I'd never seen anything like it before and was well worth the creepyness. After we took pictures, Mike took a couple more steps down the trail and almost stepped on a rattle snake. Coiling and rattling, Mike stepped back as the snake decided to retreat off the trail and into the thicker part of the brush. That was our sign for us to leave as well.
We safely made it back to the clear trail along the river. I pulled out my map that the ranger gave us and found that the trail we had been on was a closed and no longer used trail. Hmm...do you think the ranger should have told us? Well, at least we were provided with an excellent adventure. To end it, we had one last snake slither away from us.
