Idaho National Laboratory and Pickle's Place

The barren and desolate land between the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Idaho Falls is home to the Idaho National Laboratory. Driving thru the reservation made me glad I worked at the Oak Ridge National Lab and not INL. The laboratory is so far away from possible residential communities that INL operates a fleet of shuttle busses between those communities. The main facility of INL is 47 miles from Idaho Falls, 64 miles from Blackfoot, and 20 miles from Arco. One afternoon as we drove back from Idaho Falls we must have met 25 of those busses taking folks home from work. The link below zooms in on that fleet of busses parked at the lab.

https://tinyurl.com/ydd2maf8 Shuttle busses at INL

The following photos I took at the entrance sign on the Idaho Falls side of the reservation gives one a feel for how far from civilization the laboratory is.

Entrance sign to INL

Zooming back from the sign nothing as far as you can see

Looking back toward Idaho Falls

The view on the north side of our vehicle

The other side of the road

It turns out the best route from Ketchum to West Yellowstone is Highway 20 passing back thru Craters of the Moon, Arco, and INL. Pam had noticed the small local restaurant in Arco named Pickle's Place and wanted to stop and eat. There was plenty of parking for our motorhome towing the car so we stopped. I think Pam got the bug from my sister who loves to stop at small mom and pop places to eat. Below is a place we stopped with my sister in Virginia once that should give you a flavor of the places Connie likes to check out.

Dinning on the back roads of Virginia

Pickle's Place in Arco - you can see our motorhome in the background

The menu

Being retired from Oak Ridge National Lab the Atomic Burger seemed to be a fitting choice and that is what I had. It was good and on a burger scale of 10 I would give it an 8. The claim was that all their patties were hand made with local Idaho beef and never frozen. They were advertising their new pickle popsicle but we chose to skip desert and be on our way to Yellowstone.  

Desert anyone