The road from Northern Oregon into the heart of Idaho is uneventful, though that may be part of its charm. At a certain point, we left Highway 84 for the even sparser Route 20, then continued onto a seldom traveled dirt road that winds through the rock formations called Castle Rocks. Step one foot out of the car, and it’s just . . . silent. Pure, eerie nothingness. Maybe one bird chirps if you listen closely enough.

Travel a bit farther to a designated viewpoint to see the whole shebang. Again, nothing quite jumps out. That’s the point. You are standing in perfect serenity, without a distraction in the world.

We stopped to be with friends in the Wood River Valley of south-central Idaho for two nights. It’s a scenic hideaway for America’s rich and famous — less known than Jackson Hole but just as renowned for its skiing. In fact, the world’s first chairlift was built at the Sun Valley Resort by the Union Pacific Railroad in 1936. The engineer, James Curran, was........

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