Idaho – TooBusyForWork

Late posting again

I have no idea why I sometimes just can’t get in the mood to post. It might be because I am also active on Facebook and post some things there. But I can’t use FB as a search tool to show where I’ve been and what I have seen, so here I am back to it again.

We were, as usual, really busy at the FMCA convention. I taught a class on collapsable storage containers that went really well. Everybody got finished, and that’s a major accomplishment by itself. It helped that everyone knew how to use their sewing machines! Here was a sample I made.

We had thought about just gradually and slowly heading back home, but we decided to pretty much just head straight back with only a bit of detours. We spent Thursday, 22 September, in Caldwell, ID at the Elks Lodge. Nice place. Then we stayed at dry camping spot at Stanton Crossing, ID for 3 nights. There was a nice museum there we visited too. Nice change from all the crowds in Oregon. From there we went to northern Utah on the southern part of the Uintah Moutains and a nice boondock site along the Mirror Lake highway. We did some riding and generally kept relaxing. On Friday, 30 August, we were in Laramie at the Walmart. Saturday we stayed at Cabelas in Kearney, NE. Sunday we stayed at an Elks Club in Des Moines. On Monday, Labor Day, we made it home, though it was late enough in the day we just stayed in the motorhome at the local campground (Big Woods Lake) again. It is so easy to just put the motorhome in a spot and unpack gradually!

I really haven’t done much sewing this entire summer. I did finish a couple of quilts that were mostly pieced in the motorhome. The triangle one only needed binding, but the Hunter Star needed quilting and binding. Much easier to quilt on the sitdown Sweet 16!

Now we are off again. We left this morning for Red Bay, AL for our yearly motorhome service, to fix a few nagging issues, and to get a bit of remodeling done We stayed in the Walmart parking lot in Bowling Green, MO, between Hannibal and St. Louis. About 270 miles from home so a nice day’s drive.

Antelope Island views then north

I forgot to post any pictures from Antelope Island, so here you go! The bison herd on Antelope Island is famous. The bulls were looking pretty beat up since mating season was just finishing.

And no set of pictures for Antelope Island is complete without a gorgeous sunset view. The sunset was just orange/red from the smoke haze. Beautiful, but it makes it tough to breathe.

We did get to Island Park, ID and found a great boondocking site on Sunday, 21 July. We stayed there through Thursday night. We obviously took some RZR rides, but we also enjoyed meeting some friends who were work camping in the area, one in West Yellowstone and one at Henry’s Lake State Park. We discovered the osprey nest on a dead end trail we took by accident. Nice accident! There were two young birds. When I snapped this picture (from a long way away!), one adult bird had just flown off to get more food for the hungry teens.

There was quite a bit of water, and we saw lots of lilies.

We also took one day into Yellowstone. We got into the park by 7:00 am. It was cool enough some of the animals like these elk were still close to the road. The other advantage of early, cool mornings is the steam rising from the thermal features is much more visible.

These three elk were just as we got into the park

We saw a number of the primary animals – bison, bald eagle, osprey, elk, deer, and a fat, happy black bear.

We spent Friday, 26 July, at the Y Knot Winery campground, Glenn’s Ferry, ID. It was still smoky, something that had been increasing since the last couple of days at Island Park. The next day was a killer. We had reservations in Burns, OR, but the AQI was over 600! A lot of eastern Oregon seems to be on fire, and there was a big one just outside Burns. The haze was thick, and the air smelled of smoke. We just kept going until we got to Bend, OR where we stopped at an Elks Lodge again. The drive was mostly 2 lane roads with lots of curves. I was tired when we got set up!

The next day wasn’t any better, but we wanted to keep heading west to get out of the smoke. We drove from Bend to Springfield, OR, just outside Eugene, OR. I had a UPS delivery sent there, and I needed to pick it up before our chapter rally. The road from 5 miles south of Sisters pretty much all the way to Springfield was the slowest I have driven the motorhome. It was only 120 miles, but it took over 4 hours. The traffic was very heavy, there was lots of construction, and the mountain roads very winding. Ugh. We hadn’t started until 10:30, because we thought it wouldn’t take long. I was awfully tired when we finally got to the Elks Lodge where we stopped for the night. We have definitely gotten a lot out of our Elk’s Lodge membership! It is nice to have a safe spot to pull into while traveling. Many are dry camping for $5-$10 which is just fine for us. Some have electricity which is nice on hot days, and those are $20-$30 a night, still worthwhile.

I was so tired of the bad air quality, so we headed for the coast instead of staying in Springfield a few days like we had intended. We are currently at the Elk’s Lodge campground in Florence, OR 1 mile off Hwy 101. Beautiful place for $35 a night with electricity and water. We could only get 2 nights here, but they also have dry camping where we hope to spend the next nights before our FMCA rally in Coos Bay. I intend on hitting the local fabric shop for some more fat quarters and interfacing for class samples. I am teaching a class on collapsable fabric storage containers, and it is easier to show students some of the steps than describe them. I have the kits cut for the students, but I will partially make some more as examples.

Now to clean up!

Boise

We left Oregon on Monday, headed to Idaho. We are staying at Country Corner RV Park just north of Boise in Caldwell. Nice place. It is about a mile from I-84 so it is remarkably quiet, unusual for a traditional RV park. There are obviously a number of long term residents, but the place is clean and orderly. It was a long drive so we just ate some pre-cooked food from Trader Joe’s. It was, as usual, lovely.

Tuesday we were very lazy. I made a full recipe of puffy pancakes instead of the half recipe I usually make because I wasn’t thinking when I looked at the recipe! It was tasty though. Once we ate breakfast we decided to visit the Boise Zoo. Interesting little place almost right downtown along the river. The weather was a bit cool in the shade, but these three seem to be frozen.

Actually the zoo had lots of statuary all through it, though I didn’t get any other pictures. It was interesting how so many of the animals were lounging the sunniest spot in their areas.

The African exhibit was interesting in that it included interpretations that included the people of the area. There was, among other spots, a section of recreated village and a safari camp set up.

As a long time tent camper, the set up was interesting. Lots of furniture inside the tents.

In general, the zoo still had many of their animals in far too small exhibits though they had done as much as their limited space allowed to improve. They obviously cared about their animals and conservation, but it was still rather sad. I think that is the reason I didn’t take many pictures.

Today we took the Viking Opal 650 sewing machine to a technician in Boise. It has become really hard to change needles. The tech worked on it a bit, but says I probably need a new part, and he didn’t have one. I can get needles in and out with some effort, so I will just wait until I get back to Iowa to get it really fixed. It seems like some kind of an assembly error.

We also ate lunch at the same Boise Basque restaurant we at in the last time we were here: Bar Gernika. It is a small place next to the Basque museum and heritage center. It advertises Basque comfort food, and the lamb grinders we had were excellent. Nice selection of brews too, but the star was the flan! I have never in my life had such silky flan. Luckily our server also does some of the cooking, and he helps make the flan. The key seems to be the sous vide cooking for 2 hours at 180. Since Kevin is always looking for good things to cook with the sous vide system, I am sure we are going to try this.

I also finished the mini-quilt for Lily’s carrier. I used a new technique for binding that uses invisible polyester thread. It looks nice, but I want to make sure we wash it every time we do laundry to make sure it lasts. Isn’t the fabric cute?

Tomorrow we are spending the night in Twin Falls, ID, then on to Salt Lake City.

Yakima, Mount Rainer, and living on Pacific time

We tried to get a nice dinner in Missoula, but places either were closed Labor Day or had long waits. We ended up at Famous Dave’s BBQ, and it was its normal decent food. Tuesday we headed west again, and we spent the night in the Cabela’s parking lot in Post Falls, ID. It is located one miles from Washington, and on Pacific time. We decided to go out to dinner, and we had an absolutely fantastic experience at The Oval Office Martini Bar and Bistro, a small casual restaurant with a great chef and lots of local sourcing. I had leg of lamb and Kevin had a steak, and both were outstanding! This is absolutely some of the best food I have had in ages. If you are ever nearby, you should stop by.

Wednesday found us in Yakima, WA at SunTides RV park. Nice enough place with lots of grass and a small shade tree. We had hoped Yakima had some historic sites to visit, but it seems quite happy to be a major produce production town and not much else. We did pick up some wonderful peaches from a local stand, and I made a peach cobbler. Yum.

Of course the reason we are here is Mount Ranger National Park, we we took our first tour today. The first view of the namesake mountain was well outside the park at a scenic overview in the National Forest.

It looks almost like a painting, but I did no post processing on the picture. We kept getting closer and closer. Sadly some haze/clouds crept in, but not too bad.

There are more glaciers on Mt. Rainier than I have ever seen at Glacier National Park. They are mostly still good sized, though they are shrinking like all the glaciers. The surrounding forest was nice too.

Still quite a few wildflowers in the Paradise area

The hillsides were just starting to change colors

Wish I knew what plant was providing the early color

Louise Lake was next door to Reflecting Lakes, but much more reflective!

Huge basalt palisades were most impressive

Even this time of year there were some waterfalls fed by glaciers that were decent. On this one, I took a picture of Kevin about halfway down the 168’ waterfall while he was taking pictures of the bottom half.

See that little tiny person at the corner of the fences?

From Kevin’s view part way down the big drop

The park also has some fabulous trees. These pictures were taken in a grove they called Hall of the Patriarchs. Fitting name.

Wish I had thought to put something against this for scale

We were surprised at how little wildlife we saw. We visited the Longmire area first, had lunch at the National Park Inn, then drove to the Paradise section which was newer and much more crowded. As we were leaving the Paradise area, there was a rental motorhome pretty much parked in the middle of the road. Guess they had a good reason, because we saw this.

What’s that black dot in the meadow (on a bit of a zoom already)?

Other than the bear, the only wildlife we saw was a couple of ground squirrels and a few birds. Climax forests just don’t have a lot of wildlife I guess.

Tomorrow we visit the northern part of the park.

Logo Pass, Lola Motorway, and Garnet Ghost Town

We are definitely playing tourist here in Missoula. Saturday we went up Lolo Pass (Highway 12). It is a gorgeous road, and there is an informative Visitor Center at the border between Montana and Idaho. It was the wrong time of the day for a good picture, but you get the idea.

We were lucky to see a special guest they had talking about the fur trade. He was dressed in traditional Voyageur gear, and had some good skins with him. We talked a bit about how our trip had really started at Grand Portage.

We then drove part of the CCC road known as the “Lolo Motorway”, an old term for road. Of course we wouldn’t call it a road today! It is basically a rough rocky one lane track dug with a bull dozer and willing hands that follows closely the track Lewis and Clark took through the Bigroot Mountains westward in 1805 and eastwards in 1806. It was fascinating to know we were driving on the same rocks that the Corps of Discovery had ridden their horses across! It was slow going though; we probably averaged only 10 mph. We drove about an hour and a half, then turned around since it was getting late.

These mountains are rough! The journals talked about how disappointed the Corps of Discovery members were when they encountered ridge after ridge of mountains when they had been hoping for an easy path down from the Missouri headwaters to the Pacific. It took them 9 days to cross the mountains heading west, but only five days coming east. They were intelligent enough to use Indian guides, or they would never had found their way across before starving. As it was, they had major malnutrition when they encountered friendly Nez Perce on the westward journey. The skies were filled with a haze from forest fires somewhere, so the pictures really don’t do it justice. It was amazing.

Old fires are providing a bed for new growth

It is hard to see the rows of mountains, but look carefully by the two tall trees

The shaggy bark shows just how old this tree is

Today we went to the Garnet ghost town. It is advertised as the most complete ghost town in Montana, and I believe it. The town was part of the gold rush in 1898, and it participated in some of the waves of mining off and on until the 1940s.

An ice room was attached to the back of the store. See the chute for the ice?

Fun facts about the hotel: The first floor had a ladies parlor, office, and very fancy dining room. Second floor had guest rooms, and the third floor rented floor space to the miners! There were lines marked on the floor, and a miner could layout his bedroll there. Rather a different view of housing.

We have our anniversary tomorrow, and we have reservations for a boat tour on Flathead Reservoir followed by dinner. Tuesday we head west again. No posts until then.

Leaving Grand Teton and off to Lava Hot Springs

We left Gros Ventre campground on Friday. Lots of rain and cold temps were forecast so it seemed like a good idea. We decided to take KOA up on their offer of “pay for Friday, get Saturday free” and go to Lava Hot Springs KOA, Idaho. On the way out of GTNP I finally got a decent picture of the swans on the Flat River on the edge of Jackson.

The KOA itself is decent with ok sites, grass, and trees, but the noise! I expected a lot of families because of the springs, but it is the train track right at the edge of the campground that is dreadful. I only woke up a couple of times, but Kevin wasn’t as lucky. He couldn’t stay asleep at all, and trains come every 30-60 minutes. Based on the cars, this is obviously a main long distance line. We certainly won’t come back.

We did do some exploring on Saturday though. The Oregon Trail and a number of its variants went through the area, and there is a lot of history here. We found Hooper Springs near the town of Soda Springs, a naturally carbonated spring that has been used for centuries. Can you see the bubbles from the spring?

We looked for Formation Springs, but had trouble finding it. The recreation site wasn’t hard to find, but most of what had once been springs were dried up. We could hear water, but it was buried in dense shrubbery, so we gave up. We were lucky enough to get to Soda Springs geyser just after it started erupting. Quite impressive! There is a small geyser near it that gets stronger when the big geyser stops erupting. Soda Springs (the town) has been the center of a big earthquake swarm for the past few weeks. We haven’t felt any ourselves, but this entire section of Idaho so very seismically active with lots of lava beds and springs.

We also went to Chesterfield Historic Site, a fabulous ghost town from the turn of the century or so. They have tours during the summer, but all we were able to do was look at the outside of a number of restored homes. Pretty impressive.

Today we head back home. We will have a week and a half to get ready for a big midwestern trip that actually begins at Antelope Island. I am looking forward to it.

The Great American Eclipse

On Friday, 18 August, we headed to Silver Creek campground in the Boise National Forest for the eclipse. The campground is 2 1/2 hours from Boise, 75 miles. Yes, the road is that slow! It is up the Middle Fork of the Payette River, the up a tributary. There is a hot spring there, but we didn’t go swimming because it was just too crowded. There is a small resort associated with the spring and the campground. They operate a cell booster that allowed limited Verizon voice calls and simple texts, but nothing else. The sites were roomy and well separated with some shade, and all for $7.50 a night with our senior discount. We made our reservations in mid February after being alerted to the spot by a member of the Wasatch Mountain Club. It was in the path of eclipse totality, and that is what we got on Monday! It was glorious. I had all these plans for pictures I was going to take, but I was so awed that I didn’t get hardly any of them! Kevin got a few, so here are a few.

Pretty impressive!

While we were in Idaho, we also went to a Winnebago dealer in Meridian to look at Class A motorhomes. We are thinking about buying one in 4-6 years, getting a condo, then being gone even more than we are now. We don’t want a new one since the depreciation is so extreme so we will be looking for a 3-5 year old one. That means the ones new now will be on the list when we are interested. We really like the Forza 36′ so it will go on the list to look at in a few years. We also took a trip up to McCall to see if it was a place to spend time on another trip. spoiler alert – it was!