We had a day to fool around which we had scheduled without ever being here in Heyburn. This may not have been the wisest choice by me since there is little to do or see here. Our 100 mile round trip to City of Rocks yesterday was terrific but we were unable to find much to see today. Nevertheless, we went looking for some redeeming features and started our day by driving over to Minidoka Wildlife refuge a bit northeast of Heyburn.
The area between Heyburn and Minidoka is almost all farmland except where there are some food processing facilities. Maybe 15 miles into our drive, we pulled up on the north side of the refuge and found the Minidoka Dam. It is an unremarkable structure but there are quite a few interesting aquatic birds there: grebes, American pelicans and big flocks of swallows that were busy feeding on the abundance of nasty little bugs in this area. The bugs were so thick that you could see big clouds of them prior to some of them being smashed on the windshield of the truck. Stopping the truck and getting out is a rallying call for the tiny vermin so it is best to stay in your vehicle unless going for the lumpy skin motif. I’m suppose there are myriad other forms of wildlife here but we mostly saw bugs.
We drove out of the miasma of insects and decided to try a state park called Massacre Rocks about 25 miles east and took a route around the south side of Minidoka where we were fortunate to see a jackrabbit and some more swallows. Massacre Rocks are named for the location where one of the extremely rare attacks by Native Americans occurred on a wagon train back in the 1860s. Apparently it was a back and forth battle but the settlers came out on the losing side 10 to naught. The location is in a quite beautiful gorge of the Snake River that now has a state campground and a boat launch ramp. We drove through the area until we ran out of stuff to see which took about 20 minutes.
From Massacre Rocks we drove about 3 miles to a place called Register Rock where early settlers carved graffiti into a big boulder near the Snake River, leaving their misspelled names and accurate dates of their passage on a big basalt boulder. This place is on the National Register of Historic Places but seems unworthy of a special trip to see it. Instead, one can drive almost anywhere near railroad tracks here and see a plethora of graffiti painted liberally onto boxcars as art in motion.
This concluded our excursion to see all the fascinating Heyburn vicinity attractions we could find. On our way back home, we drove through Burney on the other side of the Snake River from our campground and stopped at an allegedly Chinese restaurant named Shon Hing for an early dinner. Peggy ordered a mystery pork dish and I ordered something called General’s chicken. Both dishes were not very good. The pork dish had vegetables that had been properly vulcanized to the point of tastelessness and the General got his chicken from a bag of frozen white meaty stuff. The fried rice was white which raised the question of what fried rice should look and taste like. We were not going to get the answer to this question at Shon Hing. To top it off, the little pidgin-speaking waiter attempted to have us pay way more than the food was worth through a massive arithmetic error in addition. I caught it before we paid. He didn’t even look sheepish about his abacus work.
I am sure that Heyburn residents consider their home a vibrant, interesting community but we do not agree. I will borrow a phrase from a movie to describe the place: Heyburn is a place with few admirable qualities but, taken as a whole, I was wrong to have thought so highly of it. For our readers: Give Heyburn a pass.
Despite Heyburn’s null set of attractions, we did take a few wildlife pictures toady. You can see them if you click here