Don't do THIS at Idaho's BEST RV Destination

Well, we couldn't leave Idaho without seeing its number one rated tourist attraction, Shoshone Falls. We're right on the Snake River in the booming town of Twin Falls and there is actually a lot to see in this small area, making it a perfect RV trip. But the big show is the falls. At over 200 feet tall, it's one of the largest natural waterfalls in the entire United States, even surpassing the Grand Niagara Falls. In fact, most call this the Niagara of the West. But in its peak glory, usually in the springtime, it should look like this. We might have just made a big mistake coming to see it this fall instead of the spring. Today, we'll show you all about the area of Twin Falls, Idaho, including a place you can camp for free right next to all the action. These two dogs know exactly what's going on. We've been packing up. We're ready to go. You guys ready? Should we go for a ride? I'm driving today. The whole time? Till we get to the car wash. Till we get to Blue Beacon. Okay. Till I gotta start filming. June's driving today. June's driving. Sweet Earth Roamer. We switched spots back at the rest area. Chris was itching to get back in the driver's seat. It's nice to trade off once in a while, right? It is, Chris. Yeah. It's nice to be cross-trained and take turns. Makes the day go really fast. I got a lot done, actually, of working. Yeah. Yeah. It was a nice, easy, smooth drive. Very empty, desolate out here on this 84 highway. Oh, there's a big smoky fire going on. Is that a controlled fire or a- Oh, it's so intense. Accidental fire? It looks- Looks controlled. Yeah. That's pretty close to the highway though. Well, they're over there. What are they doing? Putting it out. So because we got thwarted at our last Blue Beacon spot in Boise, we're going to try it again. Luckily, there's another one right here before we get to Twin Falls. It's one o'clock in the afternoon. Last time we tried at like five o'clock and it was a busy, busy like 12 semis. So I'm hoping we get lucky and we can get a quick RV wash. This way. Right there. Oh yeah. There it is. This is a small one. It's only a single bay, but it looks like there's only one guy in wait. So yeah, we got just one semi there waiting. Great. Good thing I can turn on a dime. This is the smallest Blue Beacon I've ever seen. Yeah. Single bay. Usually there's at least two. The reason we want to do this Blue Beacon now is because it's just so quick and convenient. Which it always was. And we knew that. But how good it actually works is what I was blown away by. I was surprised at actually how clean you can get your RV without them using brushes. Because that's the secret. That's the trick. You got to say no brushes. I don't want you no touching my vehicle. Keep your paws and your brushes off. Can you imagine what an industrial semi car wash, what their brushes look like? No. Filled with dirt grease. All types of stuff. Tire grease. So I looked inside. Yeah. To see what the holdup is. And? They're doing what they call a washout. Like they're washing the wash bay? No. Inside the back of the truck of the semi. I saw a sign that said washout customers. And then I can't really see what the rest of it says. Basically the back of the semi is open and they are spraying out whatever. I'm assuming like a cattle truck or something. That's disgusting. Great place to get your RV washed. Well. Well what an exciting day at the Blue Beacon. I know. We're so new to the Blue Beacon. I know RVers have been using the Blue Beacon forever and it's been highly recommended. But again I didn't think it was. Those who know this channel know that you're a little stingy with the pocketbook. That and I like washing, you know, the vehicles. And I didn't think honestly it would do a good job without them using the brushes. And I just never felt good about having them use brushes all over the RV that are, you know, just got done cleaning the semi wheels or the... The cattle poop? The back of a cattle truck. Oh it's another washout. Oh no. Yeah. How are you doing today? Good. How are you? Doing good. How you doing? We doing a classic wash or go-kart wash today? We just want like a standard wash. Okay, sounds good. With no brushes. No brushing. Except on the wheels. Except on what? The wheel. The wheel? Yeah, I'll brush those wheels for you. Yeah, okay. Otherwise... You want to do any Rain-X for any chance? No, just a regular wash. Sounds good. We'll take care of you guys. Do you spray the roof? Say that again? Do you spray the roofs? We have like a rinse that we turn on that could take care of it, but I'm not sure if it'll like wash it too good. It does a little bit. Sounds good. Okay. Thank you. All right. Always fun to go through a car wash, right? You know, when I was a little kid, I used to fall in the car wash. Did you? Oh yeah, I would go wild in the car wash. Forty dollars, fifty cents. You can't beat it. Man, we were here for almost an hour. I bet it was like 50 minutes. And I didn't even get lunch in during that hour. Yeah, well, we weren't expecting it. I mean, the second truck, that washout and spray or whatever they did, took, I don't know, five, six, seven, eight minutes, something like that. But the first truck took a half hour. Extra dirty. I don't know if that was what it was. I don't know what was in that truck either. We've never seen that before. No, it's just, it's just nice to get it cleaned up, you know, at least every other month or something like that. Otherwise, you all know what it's like trying to wash a big RV. And especially, I mean, look at today, it's 95 degrees out. You know, I just had a thought. So speaking of 95 degrees, it's so hot. We were going to do some boondocking around Twin Falls. No, Twin Lakes, Twin Falls. Twin Falls or Lakes? We were going to do some boondocking around Twin Falls here. But you can't, you know, comfortably do that when it's 95 degrees out. It is just super, super uncomfortable. So I found a really cool little, I think it's a town RV park. It's 25 bucks, electric, water. You know, we're just going to plug in so we have AC for us and the dogs. Yeah, I mean, you could do it. You could do it. If it was a single night. Our generator is fine to run both ACs on it. It's more just having the generator run. For that long. Straight because it's 95. By the time you go to bed at 10 o'clock, it's still like 88 degrees. Yeah, you're just burning that diesel. Yeah. So I wanted to swing by the spot we were going to stay tonight. It's like five minutes from here. And then I had this thought of going down this gravel road in the dirt and the dust. Yeah. We just paid for this cleaning. Yeah. So I'm not sure if we're okay. So we're either going to go check out the boondocking spot first, or we're going to go right to the bridge overlook, which is also five minutes away. Well, I need to know what to plug in. So I didn't want anybody to take away my boondocking card. Because I didn't want to get the RV dirty after washing it. So we're going to check out the spot real quick. It's literally right down the road. And it looks like such an easy overnight spot that this is really where I wanted to stay. And I wanted to show it so that other people could see how easy it is to visit this area, Shoshone Falls, and the bridge and the waterfalls and have a free overnight spot like this. Yeah, this is nice. We did go through a cattle guard, which is very typical. But it's on pavement. So you don't even need to worry about that dust getting us dirty, right? Yeah, this is beautiful. It's right. The entrance is right here. Just drive really slow. But it is actual RV campsites. There's just no hookups here. Oh, so it's designated spots? Yeah. Yep. You know, the designated spots are nice, but they can also be a problem. Like, meaning it's nice to have designated spots, so you know, okay, this is a designated site that I can stay at. But if it's all full, you know, you can't create more spots than what's classified. So there's pros and cons to that, wouldn't you say? I mean, number one is open right now. It looks like one, two, three, four, all those are open. That's great. Yeah, so we can just do a U-turn in here. But I just wanted to show these sites quick and how many... You want me to pull into one? Open spots. Yeah, why don't you do a loop through on one? It's actually a pull through. So this campsite is too inviting to not... Let's just stay for a while. Not stop for a minute, make a little quick bite to eat. Yeah. Yeah, it's hot though. You gotta kick that generator on and both ACs within about five minutes of stopping, maybe less. I actually felt a little bad with you out there flying the drone and I'm just in here in the AC heating up my lunch. I made some... I had some leftover taco meat in there. So I just had some taco meat quick in the fridge with some corn. And now I'm having some banana and some Greek yogurt. I heated you up some food too, Aaron. So nice. This campground... This is actually a nicer free campground than some of the ones we paid to stay at. Yeah, it was nice. It's super nice. This is a really big site. Yeah, it's a giant pull-through. It's a giant pull-through. At the Redwoods, this would have been $95. There would have been a fire hazard fee in there. So looking at the rest of the campsites, there's one fifth wheel, which I don't know if he's a camp host or not. And then there's like a couple of car campers. Otherwise, there's nobody out here. It's just too hot. It's too hot. It's really, really hot. And the sun is intense. So these are the type of spots that you either need to run your generator all day and night when it's this hot, or have a big system like what we had in the fifth wheel with almost 3,000 watts of solar and over 1,000 amp hours of lithium Battle Born batteries. Because then we could sit in the sunshine, run at least one, maybe two ACs, you know, in a situation like this where we have 1,000 watts of solar, which is pretty good, but we can't run the ACs off the batteries on this particular rig at the moment. So that means generators be on. And, you know, you gotta admit, it's pretty nice to just flip a switch. Generators on, both ACs kick on and you're eating. I needed this little break. So yes, that turned my frown upside down and I'm happy. And we'll be ready to go do more adventure after we have a little lunch here. And just about a mile away is a little pullout to get a closer look at the Perrine Bridge. And we're pretty excited to see that up close. And that's our next stop. Easy. I'm actually blown away by this area, like how friendly it is for like visiting. You know, it's not, it kind of has like a national park feel to it, but much smaller. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like there's this really cool river and bridge. It's a big deal. But it's not that busy here. So it, you know, it's on a much smaller scale, which is nice. Yeah. And to have the scenic overlook on one side of the bridge, and then to have the visitor center on the other side, you can kind of like check it out from both sides and get the lay of the land. That's beautiful. Beautiful drive over that bridge. Holy moly. So we just realized that Shoshone Falls is about 20 minutes from here. It's only eight miles, but you know, that might take a while to get there. We're kind of thinking, hey, it might be better if we just come back tomorrow morning and spend a few hours there. Yeah. You know, refreshed and ready to sightsee instead of it being, you know. Trying to cram it in. Yeah, it's the end of the day right now. Because if we try to cram it in, we're going to have to go back, right? Yes. So why not just do it the right way the first time? Yep. Should we turn on the AC for the dog? Yes, we are definitely turning on the AC. I don't want to turn this one off until that one's on. Yeah, you gotta regulate it in this temperature. You ready to check it out? Yeah. It's so green. The river, it's really pretty. That'd be so cool to be down there on the water. Yeah, we might have to do that tomorrow. Yeah, I think we can rent kayaks or canoes down there. That'd be kind of cool. Yeah. This is one impressive river, canyon, bridge, all of it. And that's a golf course right there. There's some type of lake right over there. You see that? Yeah, I do. That looks fun. He's actually standing on top of the rail. Oh, it's so freaky. Cool. Oh my gosh. Wow. I'm gonna fall right into a kayak. Is he dropping the water? Okay, he's a professional. Yeah, wow. That was really cool. He just lands on his feet in the grass. That was enough. No big deal. I'm such a cheap thrill. I got a thrill off his thrill. No, I was not expecting that. You're up next. Nope, I don't think so. Don't tell Louie. So we're right on the creek here? Yeah, 15 minutes from the visitor center. And it's like a little park. I'm hoping it's really nice. For $25 a night, you wouldn't expect much with electricity, like 50 amp pull throughs and stuff. But hey, I don't know. I think it's gonna be pretty good. This morning, you were bragging. Bragging. I said I usually take Chris to some of the not so nice RV parks around the country. But tonight, we're splurging. And we're getting a nice little city park for $25 a night. My hopes are set very high. This is kind of a scary single lane cliffhanger right here. This is cool. $25 a night, two weeks day limit. They have a two day? Two weeks day limit. Oh, okay. So we are right over here on the pull throughs. Little 40 foot pull through. If we had a toad, we wouldn't fit. We'd have to park it over there. Perfect. Yeah, this place is even much leveler than most of the campsites we go to, babe. I know. I could tell by looking at it. Auto level went right out. Slides went right out. That's when it's easy. Easy peasy. Yeah. We're getting a few people in the comment section saying, I don't understand why you don't just push the auto level button to auto level. And there is a range within the auto level that works. That's why I show the, you know, when we're seven inches off on there, that's at the very extreme of the range. And when you're over that, auto level will pick up your RV off the ground, which it can do it, but that doesn't mean, you know, none of the manufacturers of the systems recommend you do that as a regular way to level. I mean, if it's a single overnight and one little tire went and popped up and I'm tired and, you know. No, that was a very, and it is true. Like if you're starting with a site that's level, the experience of coming in, pushing that button, push that slides out, we're half set up and it took you two minutes. Like what a difference it takes. I'm glad we got power for tonight. If we would have went back to that cool, uh, free campsite across the river. That was cool. But man, we would have had the generator running all night long. Yeah. Yeah. It's hot. Yeah. It's uh, it's 94. It's 94 out, 94 right now. Yeah. So today we're headed to Shoshone Falls. It's only eight miles away from the campsite here, but it takes 20 minutes because you're going through town and it's a little windy. But this I would say is the main attraction here in Twin Falls, you know, is, uh, the big Niagara of the West. And I hear the best time to see it is in the spring time where like the, the water melt and it's higher flow. Yeah. So not a bad, uh, night's sleep. It was pretty good. We actually did run into, uh, voltage issues. Of course, after I was talking it up that, Oh yeah, we got the 50 amp. It's going to be good. But I think it's just so hot in the afternoon that voltage, it's a one way that way. It's so hot in the afternoon that everybody is using two, three air conditioners and it just pulled it down. So we did have some, some voltage issues, but we made it through the night and it was pretty comfortable. And it's going to be even hotter today. Good. How are you? Yeah, it's beautiful. It is a very windy road coming down here. I did read that, you know, you probably don't want to bring a big truck and trailer or like a fifth wheel. I mean, you could make it, but if this was busy with other cars, I mean, it's, it's pretty tight, isn't it? Yeah, it's pretty tight. I'm taking these curves at nine miles an hour. There's waterfalls everywhere. More waterfalls. RV parking only. This is us. Okay. Wide open. Yeah, there's zero. So we can pick our spot. Looks like this front one's kind of the most level. Cool. Well, right off the bat, that was easy. Yeah. Yeah. Right off the bat. As soon as you pass that last mansion house, that's right there. You take a look across and it's like, boom, there's the snake river. There's the, the Canyon and wow. It is just amazing here. Are you ready? Yeah. So from the RV parking lot, I think we're, there's the first lookout point straight across there. Yeah. If you see that way over there. Okay. That's kind of like a direct look across the falls. Should we go over this to that viewpoint? We'll check that out first. Okay. Lots of green space here, which is nice. Picnic tables. Kind of feels like Niagara falls. A little bit. But a lot like less touristy. Niagara falls is one of the huge tourist attractions on the East coast. This has this magnificent Canyon feel that I feel more here than in the falls though. Like if you were to compare the two. Yeah. I think this is a little deeper or taller. They say, but she's pretty dried up. It's still really beautiful just to see that one single kind of like big mini waterfall. I couldn't see the rainbow before. Now I see it. So I think there's different names. Like there's a bridal veil. Like that one on the right might be one of the individually named falls. Yeah. Cause it does look like pronounced and stands out compared to the rest of them. Yeah. You can see the dam in the background and it basically is damming this whole part of the upper and lower river. Imagine this place. And it's peak. Like a million years ago before anything was around. And it was just this rip rushing river coming down. Yeah. That would be crazy. Let's go to the other viewpoint and we'll be able to see down farther a little bit. Okay. This is kind of like the upper viewpoint. Yeah. That's cool. Ooh, this one's really a great angle. Yeah. Much better view. I have to admit when we first, when we first stepped out of the RV and looked this way, I was like, is that it? That's kind of underwhelming. It's hard to see from the parking lot. It's really hard to see from the parking lot. It's kind of like, where is it? It's really hard to see from the parking lot. So once you actually make it over here and then look, it's a totally different experience. The second waterfall on the right. It's amazing. It's about 10 o'clock in the morning. You can see there's very few people here. Only about a dozen cars we saw ahead of us. So it is not very busy early in the morning, which makes it a nice peaceful experience. Do you imagine being down there on a kayak or a boat? That would be really cool. I suppose there's no made of the mist tours around here. So do you think it's a big mistake coming here? Not when it's at peak? No. Still worth it? Yeah, I think it's really cool to be here. It's hard to compare, I guess, since we haven't seen the other side. But could you imagine if it was completely covering all of these rocks and like roaring down? It would be a significantly more impactful experience during the high water season. There's no doubt about that. But if you were to give me the option again, like knowing what I know now, I would still say, heck yeah, I want to go see it. See it whenever you can. For the first time, yeah. If this is my only experience here, it's still an amazing experience. It's something you don't just snub at this. We can always shoot for seeing it again in the high season. Yeah, no, it's beautiful. There's even something to say about the off seasons where, what is there, five other groups of people here? So it's like you really have a more of a private viewing. I would imagine in the busy peak season, it's packed here and you can't just feel relaxed to hang out and enjoy it for as long, because you want to like share the viewpoint with other people that want to come up and see it. It just can't help but wonder what it would feel like if it was just rushing. It was just a little bit better. Everywhere. Because it's hard to imagine, but all of that would be covered with water, like all the white rock right now, all of that would be falls, the whole thing. Oh, I didn't see this. Oh, that's, that's deliberate. That sucks. And those are things that would like kill birdies. Yeah, they're treating it like a little wishing well. Yeah, this is a great spot right here. Wow, this angle. People try to throw coins and stuff all out there, which means that it's littered everywhere. Yeah. Bad people. So this is part of the rim trail right here that actually goes all the way back to the visitor center. Yeah, I saw it was about four miles. Oh, that's nice. So if you wanted to like just park at the visitor center for the day, you could. We could have like e-biked here. You could walk here. You could, you know, get into your tow vehicle if you got one and, you know, drive around. But it's kind of cool that the entire rim is connected. That is super cool. It has a big trail. So then you can see like all the different little viewpoints. So you can definitely see Shoshone Falls in like, you know, 30 minutes if you just want to drive here, go to the lookout. It's grand and massive. Or you could probably spend the entire day here. Yeah, depending on how you want to do it, for sure. Yeah, so we're going to cook breakfast and then I think we're going to get the e-bikes out and cruise around, enjoy a little bit more of the day. Before we head back and next episode, we are headed back to one of the most coveted boondocking spots in the entire country. True. And we're going to see if we can get in. We're going to test our luck. Ever wonder where the name Irene Iron Travels comes from? It's actually named after my online fitness and nutrition coaching business, Irene Iron Fitness. I help people move better, feel better and eat better with strength training and real food. 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