Idaho is the 14th largest US state and sits between Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. It is most famous nationally for potatoes (it produces about 30% of the US crop) and for being the state most people struggle to locate precisely on a map. This anonymity is, for visitors, an extraordinary asset. Idaho has a concentration of natural wonder — river gorges, volcanic fields, alpine lakes, whitewater rivers, wilderness areas — that rivals any state in the American West, with a fraction of the crowd.
Boise — America's Most Underrated City
Boise (pronounced "Boy-see," not "Boy-zee," though locals accept either) is Idaho's capital and by far its largest city (population ~250,000 metro). It consistently places in the top tier of national liveable-city and fastest-growing-city surveys — drawing domestic migration from California and the Pacific Northwest in large numbers since 2015. The reasons are legible to any visitor: a compact, walkable downtown with excellent restaurants and a thriving live music scene, the extraordinary Boise River Greenbelt (25-mile paved path along the river through the city, with free floating the river in summer a local institution), easy access to hiking and skiing in the Boise foothills directly behind the city, and a genuine arts and food culture that has developed alongside the growth. The Basque community in Boise — the largest Basque-American population in the world outside the Basque Country itself, descendants of late 19th-century sheepherders — has given the city a distinctive culinary thread: Bar Gernika and Leku Ona on the Basque Block on Grove Street are two of the most interesting American ethnic restaurants you'll find in any mid-sized city.
Hells Canyon — Deeper Than the Grand Canyon
May 1973: Raft, Snake River, Hells Canyon, Idaho (Boyd Norton / Documerica)
Hells Canyon, carved by the Snake River along the Idaho-Oregon border, is the deepest river gorge in North America at 7,993 feet from the rim to the river — deeper than the Grand Canyon's maximum depth of 6,093 feet. The canyon walls rise in series of terraced basalt formations from a river that runs continuous Class III-V whitewater through the lower section. Multi-day whitewater rafting trips through Hells Canyon (typically 5–6 days from the put-in at Hells Canyon Dam to the takeout at Lewiston/Clarkston) are one of the premier wilderness river experiences in the US: no roads access the interior of the canyon, jet boats supply the river lodges, and the combination of gold rush history (Chinese miners and Idaho homesteaders left structures still standing in the canyon walls), ancient Nez Perce pictographs, and raw geological scale is extraordinary.
Craters of the Moon — Where NASA Trained Apollo Astronauts
The Craters of the Moon National Monument covers 1,117 square miles of the Snake River Plain — a vast field of lava flows, cinder cones, spatter cones, and lava tubes formed by volcanic eruptions as recent as 2,000 years ago. The landscape is so convincingly lunar that NASA used it for crew training in 1969 before the Apollo 14 mission. Visitors can enter the lava tubes (bring a flashlight; they extend hundreds of feet into the basalt and maintain 40°F year-round), walk the lava flows, and observe a landscape of volcanological diversity almost impossible to see anywhere else outside of Iceland. The monument is open year-round; in winter, the road is groomed for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing — one of the more eccentric winter recreation options in America.
Sun Valley — World-Class Skiing Without the Vail Prices
Sun Valley in the Wood River Valley was America's first destination ski resort, opened in 1936 by the Union Pacific Railroad and popularised by Ernest Hemingway (who wrote parts of For Whom the Bell Tolls here and is buried in nearby Ketchum). Baldy Mountain rises 3,400 vertical feet above the valley floor — competitive with Colorado's best ski mountains — and while it has never been cheap, Sun Valley's base-to-summit ski quality, low crowds relative to Vail/Aspen, and the authentic Western mountain town character of Ketchum (3 miles from the resort) make it the thinking skier's choice in the Mountain West.