The Bruneau Dunes are perhaps the most bizarre natural phenomenon in the state. Trapped in a low-laying basin just south of Mountain Home, they're thought to have originated during the Ice Age, in the aftermath of the Bonneville Flood. Unlike most sand dunes, those at Bruneau don't shift dramatically with the wind. They're trapped in the basin, and the highest peak stays at about 470 feet year-round.
An hour and a half southeast of Twin Falls, near the small community of Almo and just a few miles from the Utah border, is the City of Rocks: a national reserve which holds some of the Pacific Northwest's weirdest formations. This silent city was a stop along the California Trail, and today is a paradise for mountain climbers.
There are extreme sports, and then there's BASE Jumping. It's bungee jumping without the cord. Skydiving without the airplane. You just strap on a parachute and jump off something tall. And Twin Falls is the only place in the world you can legally do it year-round.
The sun was hot on the back of my neck as I crouched down over another pile of rocks, wielding my hammer and garden fork. My legs were getting sore, and I kept forgetting to drink water, but the growing exhaustion didn't matter. Every time I had almost convinced myself to quit, a shiny glint appeared underfoot. Yes, my precious, another opal!
Comprising 618 square miles of other-worldly lava-formed landscape, the Craters of the Moon National Monument is one of the strangest geographic areas in the entire country. Harsh, dry and largely barren, this craggily beautiful region has remained largely untouched by a humanity that never figured out a use for it. We visited one morning in late October, after a light layer of snow had covered the ground.
Older than Vail, Jackson Hole, Aspen or Lake Tahoe, Sun Valley was America's very first winter resort, hosting celebrities, families and skiing fanatics since 1936. We spent two autumn nights there, basking in its classic elegance.
We had done whitewater rafting, zip lining, mountain biking and a whole lot of hiking -- but there was still one more outdoor activity we wanted to try: horseback riding. And we couldn't have chosen a better place to knock it off our list than in the Sawtooth Mountains around Redfish Lake.
I was walking about fifteen feet in front of Jürgen, when suddenly I spun around, grabbed the canister of Bear Spray strapped to my hip, and pointed it right at his face. "You're toast, grizzly punk!" Jürgen didn't even flinch... it was, after all, the 23rd time I'd practiced this maneuver.
The longest single-stage gondola in the world isn't found in the Alps or Asia, and doesn't belong to a famous resort like Vail or St. Moritz. Nope, this record goes to the Silver Mountain Ski Resort, in humble little Kellogg, Idaho.
Billed as one of America's most unforgettable bike rides, the 15-mile Hiawatha Trail follows the path of a former train route through pitch-black tunnels and across bridges which overlook vast valleys of pine. On the final weekend of the season, we rented bikes and completed the trail -- "unforgettable" doesn't even begin to describe it.
