We'll Take Any and All Snow You May Have in Idaho

Picture by Bill Colley.

A fellow told me this week that some of our highest peaks are bare. I saw more snow in the South Hills in October than we saw at Thanksgiving. While I may not like driving in it, we desperately need it to battle the drought. A big snowpack in winter brings a deluge of runoff in spring, which flows into irrigation canals and makes things green. Southern Idaho has been settled twice. The first arrivals from Utah abandoned the effort. The second wave succeeded with irrigation.

There were also far fewer people here than the almost 2 million we now have statewide.

I caught the weekend weather forecast on the website of KBOI TV. It looks like the mountains are going to see some serious snow.

History Could Favor More Snow

The dry start to December shouldn’t leave us resigned to a dry spring. It was about this time of year in 2016 when I bought a car. The weather was so nice I went on a test drive to Jerome and back with the windows down. A few weeks later, things were vastly different. Some mornings as I left for the office the temperature was well below zero. In the teens below zero! And there was snow. One afternoon driving home I stopped for a light at Cheney Drive and North Washington Street. I barely made it out of the deep snow and through the intersection.

There's Got to be a Happy Medium

On Christmas Day 2016 I got stuck in drifting snow on South Washington Street.

I’m not asking for a repeat of the winter of 2016-17. There must be a happy medium available.

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Many of the included towns jump out at the casual observer as popular summer-rental spots--the Ozarks' Branson, Missouri, or Arizona's Lake Havasu--it might surprise you to dive deeper into some quality-of-life offerings beyond the beach and vacation homes. You'll likely pick up some knowledge from a wide range of Americana: one of the last remaining 1950s-style drive-ins in the Midwest; a Florida town that started as a Civil War veteran retirement area; an island boasting some of the country's top public schools and wealth-earners right in the middle of a lake between Seattle and Bellevue; and even a California town containing much more than Johnny Cash's prison blues.

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To determine the most popular national parks in the United States, Stacker compiled data from the National Park Service on the number of recreational visits each site had in 2020. Keep reading to discover the 50 most popular national parks in the United States, in reverse order from #50 to #1. And be sure to check with individuals parks before you visit to find out about ongoing, pandemic-related safety precautions at www.nps.gov/coronavirus.