Lewiston - talk to me about the smell

[Cnynrat]

One other note that might be important to folks considering living in CdA and commuting to Spokane for work, the actual distance between these cities is more like 30 miles, not the 60 referenced above. Can be a little more or a little less depending on your start and end points, but city center to city center is shown as 33.8 miles on Google Maps.

Dave

[VeniVidiVelcro]

Originally Posted by banjomike

If you really want to see them all, prepare for some long-distance travel. Idaho is almost 600 miles long north and south, and about 300 miles at its widest east to west.

All the truly spectacular outdoor stuff lies in the essentially un-inhabited center of the state, which is so wild and remote in parts that it won't ever be inhabited.

But the major cities and their surrounding small towns and inhabitable rural surroundings break down into 4 areas:
1- The panhandle (usually called NID- North Idaho- here) which extends from Lewiston at the south to the Canadian border at the north. The panhandle is relatively narrow, but it's long.

2- North-Central Idaho. This area includes parts of what many folks maintain is part of the panhandle. I'm using this to include some cities that are south and west of Lewiston.
These towns are: Grangeville, Orofino, Riggins, New Meadows, McCall, Council and Cascade on its west side, all small towns, and Salmon on its east side, in a remote pocket by itself. This area is cut in half by wilderness. Of them, Salmon is the largest city, because it's location makes it a service/supply center for a big area.

3-South-Central Idaho. This area includes the Treasure Valley, the largest population center in the state, which lies on the western edge. It includes Boise, Caldwell, Nampa, Meridian, and small towns to the north, Horseshoe Bend, New Plymouth, Weiser, Payette, Emmett.

4- Southern Idaho is broken into 2 corridors with the big Arco desert separating them into west and east.

Southwest Idaho includes Mountain Home, 75 miles south of Boise, Ketchum, Hailey, Gooding, Twin Falls, and the smaller towns Jerome, Gooding, Burley, Rupert, American Falls, Bliss, Hagerman. Twin Falls is the largest.

Southeast Idaho lies in a corridor along the eastern edge of the state It includes Preston, the largest southward city, and neighbors Malad, Montpelier Soda Springs, and Lava Hot Springs.

Northward of Preston lies Pocatello, the most southerly large city in the corridor. Then Blackfoot, Idaho Falls, Rexburg, St. Anthony, and small towns Driggs, Ashton, Rigby, Victor, and others.

The SE corridor is the second highest population in the state. Pocatello and Idaho Falls are the largest.

Each area has it's own distinctively different terrain. Each is someone's perfect picture of life in the far west. About the only thing that they all share in common are pine trees, sagebrush, mountains, many streams, and a dry climate.

In General:
Almost all the good agricultural land lies in the south, where most of the vistas are more open and the expanse is wider.
The Arco desert isn't a sand desert. It's the volcanic track of the great Hot Spot that carved its way across the state and is not under Yellowstone Park, just outside Idaho's boundaries. The old lava flows in the desert made passage across them impossible at first, but there are a few highways that now pass over the Arco desert, and most of the area is dry steppe that's interrupted by lava flows.

The SE corridor's scenery varies from alpine, with forested mountains and lakes on the east to the eastern side of the Arco desert on the west. It is the headwaters country for the Snake River, the largest in the state and 2nd largest in the northwest, and it all lies on the edge of the Great Divide and the Rockies.

Near the Montana border, north of Ashton, is an ancient volcanic caldera that forms a big flat, forested valley that's about 5,000 feet high that has one small town that is actually a combination of a town and a bunch of commercial vacation lodges called Island Park. The 'Main Street' is actually Hwy.20, and is about 20 miles long.

The closest city is West Yellowstone, Montana. The second closest of any size is Rexburg to the south. Island Park is unique to itself. There's no other area in the U.S. like it.

South-Central's terrain is slightly flatter throughout, with lower rolling hills around Boise that lead to mountains in the east, with the Arco desert on their other side.

Mountain Home lies at the base of a series of high valleys that are separated by rolling forested mountains and more rugged rocky mountains. Each of these valleys tend to also be surrounded by national forests.

North-Central Idaho is heavily forested and has narrower vistas in steeper, narrower canyons. Grangeville lies on a high flat plateau that's also unique to itself.

NID is essentially alpine, with many rolling forested mountains and lakes. Coeur d'Alene, the largest city lies on the shores of Lake Coeur d'Alene, and Sandpoint to the north also lies on a lakeshore, as does some smaller towns.

South of C d'A lies the old mining districts of Wallace and Kellogg, both in steep forested valleys, along with St. Maries, an old logging town on the St. Joe river. The largest metro area is C d'A and Spokane, which lies over the Washington boundary 60 miles west.

So if you want to see it all, prepare to drive in a long line along the west side of the state, then the drive will be a big U that skirts the Arco and goes east, then another long line on the SE side. That drive will only cover the basics. There are a lot of scenic treasures that surround them all that will require many side trips.

Just to see all the state's scenic variety would require about 30 days, I think, mostly spent on the road. Out here, we measure in hours not miles, as the roads are mostly narrow and winding.

I've only covered all the stuff I've actually seen and have been in during my lifetime here. There are many places I haven't been to yet, and it has been as long as 50 years since I was last in others.

Thank you so much for this!

[margo62145]

What is CDA? C-D???

[Keim]

Originally Posted by margo62145

What is CDA? C-D???

Coeur d'Alene

[Clark Fork Fantast]

Originally Posted by margo62145

What is CDA? C-D???

C-D = City-Data.