Outdoor activities (Idaho Falls, Lava Hot Springs: homes, buy, movie theater)

[OurNextAdventure]

Aside from Fishing the snake river, what kind of outdoor things are there to do in say a 50 mile radius of Idaho Falls? My kids spend almost every waking moment outside.

[Ret.InAmmon]

Hiking, climbing, hunting, off-road riding (motorcycles, four-wheelers), skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, team sports (soccer, football, etc), bicycle riding (road), mountain biking. The list is endless.

[banjomike]

There's swimming. There are natural hot pools, including a great old hot spring swimming pool that has a water slide and a series of warm to hot soaking pools. Folks swim in the Snake, and all the other local waters. There are lots and lots of places here to swim.
Just outside that 50-mile radius lies Lava Hot Springs, about 80 miles south. It has Olympic sized stuff there and is some of the sweetest hot water in the west.

Lots of golf courses. Lots of equine activitives, rodeos, western shooter stuff, some Western ride and barbecue places, where visitors ride in horse-drawn wagons out to a big barn where they're fed well and are entertained by cowboy musicians and actors.
The horse stuff isn't only rodeo; there are cow cutting events, English dressage and jumping events, calf ropings, and kid's mutton-busting rodeos going on all summer around here.

If you don't want to handle the sheep yourself and want to train one of those genius Border collies to do it for you, we have that happening too. If your child wants to join the FFA and grow the prettiest piglet of the year, she can do it here, and for sure, she'll learn how to groom a mighty pretty pig to the peak of pig perfection.

If Mom always wanted to make her own gravy boat, she can do it here. There's a pottery club. If she would rather paint baked mud than throw it, there's a ceramic club here where she can buy the gravy boat and decorate it to suit herself. Got knitting and quilting clubs too. And camera clubs, and wine-tasting clubs.

Inside Idaho Falls is a thriving amateur acting scene that has its own theater, and has drama activities for kids. (As if they needed any). The Idaho Falls Art Museum also has a ton of art activities for kids it offers daily. The same is true with the Museum of Idaho, a world-class museum that gets major traveling exhibits 3-4 times yearly that run for months.

The library hosts a lot of writing activities, and has a summer reading thing for kids that's participatory and has a competitive goal a child can meet by reading enough books.

The Willard arts center has activities of all kinds, and its auditorium, which was once the fanciest movie theater in Idaho Falls, hosts dozens of professional musical acts, comedians, kid's live shows, magicians, etc. Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen played there a couple of weeks ago. They are typical of the caliber of musicians who play there.

The Idaho Falls Civic Auditorium puts on its own shows, which are typically those that draw larger crowds than the Willard center can handle. It seats around 3,000, and has hosted lots of very well known entertainers.

Currently in the works is an even larger Events Center which, when completed will be a multi-purpose, multi-use facility that will serve as an indoor sports arena, a civic recreation center, and an arena that can seat around 20,000, so it will attract the big stadium acts.
Idaho Falls will have the only indoor arena of this size between Salt Lake City and Seattle/Portland, so it's expected that the A-list touring acts- the ones like Taylor Swift or the other big draws- will be stopping here, as this is a natural mid-way point that makes a stop in Idaho both profitable.
That's still a few years off, but it's now in the final planning stages.

If that all is not enough, you can always just take a stroll on the green belt, feed the wild geese even though the sign says not to, and take pictures of the tourists taking pictures of you. If that gets old, just walk to the river bank in the middle of town and drown a worm. I've seen 8-pound trout pulled out of the Snake by kids who ride down to the river on their bikes to go fishing.

You can catch and keep all the rainbows you want. There's a limit on the native Cut-throat trout, but Idaho is trying to reduce the numbers of the non-native Rainbow trout, which has taken over most of the Cut's native waters.

Yellowstone Lake, about 90 minutes from Idaho Falls, inside Yellowstone Park, is full of huge lake trout- they are all Rainbows, grown to enormous size, and you can keep them too, no limit. If you have a boat, it's probably the best big-fish lake in the west right now.

[volosong]

Originally Posted by banjomike

...
Yellowstone Lake, about 90 minutes from Idaho Falls, inside Yellowstone Park, is full of huge lake trout- they are all Rainbows, grown to enormous size, and you can keep them too, no limit. If you have a boat, it's probably the best big-fish lake in the west right now.

Do you, or anyone else know, if kayaks are allowed on Yellowstone Lake? It's on my list of things to do this summer, that is if it is not prohibited.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by volosong

Do you, or anyone else know, if kayaks are allowed on Yellowstone Lake? It's on my list of things to do this summer, that is if it is not prohibited.

That's a good question!

I don't know the answer, but it looks like you can kayak from what I see on the park's rules and regs website:

https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/boating.htm

They are trying to keep those invasive mussels out of the waters there, so you have to clean your kayak hull, but other than that, it looks like the activity is permitted.

It would be big fun to do that on the lake. There aren't a lot of roads that surround the lake, so using a kayak to go find a nice little cove to camp in overnight would be very cool.

[OurNextAdventure]

Great response Mike. All of that aside from the Artsy stuff sounds very fitting for us.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by AzDesertRat86

Great response Mike. All of that aside from the Artsy stuff sounds very fitting for us.

Thanks.
You never know about where you will suddenly develop some profound new interest in life. The arts tend to make any life a lot more interesting once you do a bit of exploring.

I was never very interested in playing music until I took up the banjo at age 18. I liked to listen to music, and I liked the sound of a banjo, and thought it would be easy to learn, so I bought my first one on a lark; something to tinker with in an idle hour.

It was easy at first, except that in 1962, no one played the banjo but me anywhere I went. I had to learn to play on my own, and the more I listened to banjo music, the more I wanted to learn what I heard others do with it.
The easy stuff was like sailing along on a nice smooth straight road. When I began learning the good stuff, it was like that road ended at the edge of a deep cliff and I was suddenly sailing along in mid-air.

There's a big thrill in sailing through the air. The only hard part is the landing.
So I just kept sailing on, going deeper an deeper. And now, 53 years later, I know enough that I have some wings. They grew with my knowledge, so when I eventually touch down, if ever, it will be a soft landing.

Along the way, that little passing interest ended up making me a lot of money, introduced me to a thousand people I would have never met, and gave me an abiding interest I've never quit enjoying.

The challenge of learning something new has never waned, and that banjo has taken me places and things I never dreamed I would go, or see, or do.

These days, I can plan a cross-country trip and never have to plan on a night in a motel. I know enough brothers and sisters of the banjo I can flop at their homes along the way, and every hour spent with them will be big fun for us all, every time.

Am I past my prime? I can't play as fast as I once could, and I've forgotten as many tunes as I remember, but when the blues set in, or there's some boredom in my very routine life, my banjo still cures both just as well as it ever did. After an hour spent with it, I'm good to go again. The feeling of accomplishment is always a reward. That feeling stays, but the sound always disappears as soon as the string is struck, so it's like a never-ending stream of clear water for my soul's refreshment.

That's the power of the arts. They all take a person to brand-new places that never grow old.

[Outta_Here]

I'll second the above post. You just never know where your next interest will come from.