Chasing Southern Idaho’s Waterfalls: Perrine Coulee, Ritter Island, & Shoshone Falls

Yesterday we kicked off our time in Idaho by kayaking to a gorgeous spring, visiting a canyon, eating ice cream, and hiking to a super cool balanced rock. And today we're starting with sunrise at one of the area's most popular structures, the Parine Bridge. The bridge is about 1,500 feet long and it's a very popular spot for base jumpers, but it's what lies below that makes it extra amazing. So last year we visited southern Idaho for the first time almost exactly a year ago and we came just to see one thing in particular. So we hadn't really researched the area much since our time here was short. So we were driving through kind of a remote area heading into town and then we crossed the Parine Bridge and it just blew our minds when we saw the view underneath it. There's a huge canyon, there's the Snake River, there are golf courses, there are waterfalls. We just, I think we both said holy crap when we crossed the bridge for the first time. Yeah even still like we've been here the last few days and we cross over the bridge a couple times every day and still we're just like it's hard to keep your eyes off it. It's hard to keep your eyes on the road too. It's kind of dangerous but it's just beautiful. Oh my gosh it's just it was so unexpected for us and it's just so special that we just absolutely love this view. As we mentioned yesterday this area is known for having tons of waterfalls and the city of Twin Falls is actually nicknamed the city of waterfalls. Our goal for the day is to see as many waterfalls as we can, all of which are a little bit different from each other and our first one of the day is just down here in the canyon. Our first waterfall of the day is the Perrine Coulee Falls which is just on the side of the canyon that we were just looking down into. So it's kind of tricky to get to. There's no designated parking area and so where we did end up parking, you have to walk back up the hill a little bit and it says make sure you to walk on the left side against the traffic but then there's a sign just below that sign that says bicycles and pedestrians prohibited. So we really don't. It's a little confusing. So it's like yes you can walk on this side but no you're not allowed at all so we're always rule followers but we don't really know what else to do. We listen. We're following the rule that works in our favor. Yeah it's only about maybe a five minute walk back up the hill. Some people do park right by where you get go access the falls but we just didn't really want to leave the van just parked. It's like right on the bend of the curve. Yeah so we parked right down by the park like centennial park i think yeah something like that and we're just walking up the hill. It was super easy and what's nice is when you get here the waterfall is just right here. It's again bam right in your face. So once you get here there's like this little bush thing we're gonna have to go into i think and then we should be at the falls. So it took maybe about 20 to 30 seconds max to get down from the road to the waterfall and this thing is massive. It is 200 feet tall and it is just flowing and i've heard that this is a year-round waterfall so no matter what time of the year you visit there will be water coming down. Sorry for yelling we feel like it's really loud. This waterfall is powerful but the best thing about this waterfall is you can walk behind it which is what we're about to go do. I'm absolutely drenched right now. My sunglasses are soaked. My hair is all wet. It's just like raining all over me. This is so amazing. So that's the golf course i played yesterday Canyon Springs golf course. You can of course see the waterfall from there and it's an awesome view from down there but it's way more spectacular when you get to walk behind it and you're right up on it. We just love waterfalls and the reason one of the reasons why we love them so much is that every single one is different. Even the same waterfall can be different depending on when you visit it. Sometimes they're raging and sometimes they're kind of trickling so it just makes it always a fun and unique experience. Like the waterfall we went to yesterday was only 20 feet tall but it was super wide and this one was 200 feet tall but more narrow and both were absolutely amazing. We came down to the downtown area of Twin Falls to get some coffee at a place called Twin Beans. I got a Bellatrix. It has chocolate and cinnamon and coffee. And vanilla I think too. Vanilla maybe too. And I got their craft caramel latte. I guess I can take my mask off. Oh no. It's a house made caramel. It's a house made caramel which is my favorite because I just love like the taste of homemade syrups in my coffee so I'm very excited about this. Mmm that's really good. This is delicious too. Sugary milky coffee goodness. This is sweet but it's not too sweet. Well the camera battery died. How rude. But what I was saying was these drinks aren't overly sweet. They're just perfect. Good flavor. Not too sweet. They're delicious. Definitely come to Twin Beans. It's a cool building on the inside too. Yeah I think it used to be something else. I sold a fountain I think. I was like I took a video of what it said but I don't I don't remember. But one thing that we've just loved about Idaho so far, we can't speak to all of Idaho, is at least in this area everyone's just so friendly. Like we've had the best service. People stop very far in advance to let you cross the street when they don't really need to. Like it's just most people say hi. Yeah everyone's very friendly. They talk about southern hospitality but I don't know Idaho hospitality is up there with it. Pretty good. The next stop on our waterfall tour is Ritter Island which is one of the parks in the Thousand Springs Park network that we talked about yesterday. And the reason we chose to come here is because we saw a photo of multiple waterfalls next to each other up against like a canyon with a ton of trees. It just looks so beautiful. We actually see it right now and it does look beautiful. And we were like that looks awesome we have to come here. So the first thing you notice when you pull up you drive over a little bit of water and you see that it is crystal clear. So we're walking into the park and Skip the volunteer that's at the front he fed us in on let us in on a little bit of information. And he said that there's an aquifer underground that's the size of the state of Rhode Island. That's huge. And so the water from there is pumped all through here and they actually have a hydroelectric plant that powers the towns around here I guess. And so the water from the aquifer takes a hundred years to get from there up to here and it's coming off the mountains here and it's coming all through the mountains and powers the turbines the electric plant. Crazy. Yeah it's absolutely wild. He said like there's like so much water pressure just that comes out of the mountains. Yeah. He said that right? I didn't make that up. Yeah. But he also said the water's 58 degrees so it might be a little chilly to swim but it's very nice to look at. Skip pointed us in the direction of the main waterfall Minnie Miller Falls. So Minnie Miller is the person that kind of built some of the structures on the island and so you walk past the barn and the house and you'll see the waterfall walk and that's the way we're going now. We made it to the falls. It was a super super quick walk. There is the spring kind of blocking us from being able to get like right up to it. We thought we could maybe get right up to it but that actually might be a different waterfall that we saw in a different area of the park. So we'll check that out next but you can see all the super clear water and he said the water's so clear because it cleans itself on its 100 year journey to get here so that's why it's extremely crystal clear and just kind of like yesterday at the Blue Heart Spring it has this like vibrant green color because of all the plant life underneath it. Just so beautiful and there's I can't even count how many waterfalls are on this right now. There are so many. We're gonna try to fly up the drone and see if we can get a closer look. So there's a farm on the property that I guess they would milk and breed Guernsey type of cows or herds of them and they've restored a lot of the inside back to the 1920s or the original state of it. It's really cool. They have a lot of original equipment in here. All the fixtures and everything are apparently supposed to be pretty original. It's just really cool to walk around. And bonus it's dog friendly. There's an upstairs you can explore too. Whoa this is so cool. I've never been in a barn like this before. I've always wanted to though. They're always so beautiful on the outside. So this is where we parked and then we went up to Minnie Miller Falls but Lemon Falls are the falls that I saw online where you can get right up to them. So we're going to go try to find those ones next. I think we saw them when we parked and I asked Skip about them but he did warn us that they might smell a little bit because it looks like there's a trout farm right there. Whoa that spray coming off of them is crazy. I can feel it from here. It does smell a tiny bit and just knowing that it's coming from the fishery is kind of gross but it does feel good. We made it to waterfall stop number three. I guess technically waterfall number four which is the Millad Gorge State Park which is also in the Thousand Springs system. And it's the same thing that we were saying yesterday where you pull up and you don't see anything. It's just farmland and super flat but from the photos I've seen there's going to be a pretty epic gorge here very soon. So you pay five dollars to get into the park and this actually gets you into any other Idaho State Park for the day. So Millad Gorge is actually a park that you mostly just drive around and she said there's a loop drive with six different viewpoints. Only one of them I think is a waterfall so this is only partially a waterfall stop but we should have pretty awesome gorge views as well. And we did try to look up the other day what the difference between a canyon and a gorge is and we really couldn't figure it out. They're basically both canyon like things with water rushing through them so we'll see how this one compares to Box Canyon yesterday. We're at the Devil's Punchbowl. It's a big giant waterfall ripping through the canyon down there. It gets like really cool and tight winding through the rocks. It's freaking beautiful. I know it looks tiny right now. We're a ways away. We'll zoom in. All of the photos I've seen of the Devil's Punchbowl look a lot closer up than we were able to get even with our zoom lens so not super confident that that was the maybe the right spot everyone gets their photos from but regardless it was gorgeous. Get it? So we have a slight change of plans. We're kind of running low on time and we feel like we got to see a lot of the Millad Gorge just from that first overlook so we're actually going to head to our next stop and next and final stop for the day which if you've seen all of our vlogs this spot may look a little familiar. Last but definitely not least we are at Shoshone Falls which is probably the most popular waterfall in the area. We've been here before when we passed through last time so we're sorry if we're repeating something from our previous vlog but it's just too good to pass up. Shoshone Falls is nicknamed the Niagara Falls of the West but it's actually taller than Niagara Falls. It's 212 feet tall and 900 feet wide. It's made up of like a bunch of different like streams of waterfalls. It's so crazy. It does cost five dollars a car to get but trust us it is so worth it. It's just as beautiful as I remember. We hear that sometimes the water isn't as powerful as it is today but when we pay them at the little booth they have like a water level meter and it said high today. We're here July 2nd. Last time we were here it was very late June so I guess around this time of the year it might be good. It's raging today. Oh my gosh it's raging. And that does it for our two days in southern Idaho. We've seen springs, waterfalls, canyons, gorges. We fit in as much as we could and it has been a blast. But now it's time for us to head up to the Sawtooth Mountains. This gets you into all other areas of the Thousand Island State Park and also... Thousand Springs. No it's not the dressing.