Massacre Rock...

I've been wanting to head to Massacre rock forever and since it's just down the road it was always put on the "sometime" list. But we finally made it over Labor Day weekend. The visitor center is always the first stop..

Inside showed a typical day on the Oregon trail and then it had a list of what was taken in the wagon...

I was most giddy about this...

an ACTUAL journal that told the events along the trail... how cool was that!! I could have spent all day sitting there reading it. I thought I'd be able to find a copy of it at the Idaho Historical area in the library but so far I haven't. Wish I would have taken a picture of each page to read it entirely. Might have to go back and do that.

After we found out which trails were the best to hike we headed toward the first one... which led you through the history of the landscape. Talking about these huge boulders that were deposited here from the Bonneville flood.

Little history... the Bonneville flood happened about 15,000 years ago, it was so forceful that it changed the shape of the mountains... you can see the notch cut out of the hill by these big boulders..

From here it was onto the trail featuring actual wagon ruts.

The trail took us under the interstate... really freaky..

The wagon ruts were not what I expected... thought it would have been a little bit more preserved. To me it looked like anyone could have made them with a dirt bike.

We headed back to the car and continued down the highway for a couple miles to see Register Rock..

Really cool to see this and think about the actual people that spent the time carving their name to leave "their mark" on the trail. There were hundreds and hundreds of names. Makes me wonder what happened to them later... did they make the journey the whole way... were their hopes and dreams met when they reached their destination??

Then onto lunch in the car... because my 2 "outdoor trail blazers" didn't want to sit on the picnic benches with spider webs.