Idaho – We don’t know??????

Dave and I just finished our 5 days in Ririe, Idaho. The thing about traveling full time is once you have spent the whole day driving, then getting set up at the campground, making dinner, feeding the pups, etc., we are usually pooped on the first night and and into the next day. I don’t know what it is about driving that makes us tired, but it does. Probably all that time trying to find the right roads, watching for random stuff to get kicked up on our vehicles, looking for gas stations, trying to see some scenery, and starting the morning way to early and in a rush to finish getting packed up and ready to go……….. So this trip and the time we spent in Ririe, went waaaaayyyyy to fast for us to really appreciate the area or see much of it.

The campground was decent and we actually had a nice grass area and some shade. Definitely appreciated in this heat! We did do some driving around, however, the smoke definitely found us and so taking photos and getting to really see the area was a lot tougher than we thought it would be. We were still without internet and cell service unless we drove somewhere and then had to sit to make a phone call. Not ideal and not necessarily a proven method. We did look on our t-mobile coverage map and wouldn’t you guess, we picked the only spots to visit this summer, in the US, that do not have coverage.

What we did see of the area, was beautiful. The snake river ran through the town and the surprising thing was to see how fast it flowed. Our understanding is that Idaho has some of the best white water rafting rivers in the US. After leaving Montana and seeing how dry their rivers were at this time of year, we were amazed at how much water and and how fast it was moving through this state. Green grass, beautiful wheat fields, potato fields, nothing we saw looked dry at all.

The largest town near us was Idaho Falls. What a crazy place that is! It was about 30 minutes from us and to get groceries for the week, we did run into town. We caught a glimpse of the “falls”, sat at the longest stop light possible to make a left turn and in general realized once again that we like the smaller towns that we are used to living in back in Minnesota. Since this is the nearest town with groceries, we are assuming multiple communities visit here on a daily basis. Probably similar to living in Wyoming and running into Forest Lake, although Idaho Falls is at least twice the size of Forest Lake. That always opens the possibilities of finding something unique and you know I couldn’t resist having Dave stop at a place full of Antler art. Most items were made by artists in the area and I found a beautiful basket with amethyst, antlers, tanned hide and of course an antler handle that now graces our table. How could anyone resist?

As we were leaving on Friday and heading to Utah, our typical travel day has us stopping at a scenic rest area for a morning break and again at lunch for our picnic. What we found at our first area was a large section of lava rock and something called “Hells Half Acre”. We found ourselves surrounded by huge tumbleweed and the most amazing rock formations, one would not expect to find in the middle of the mountains. I thought about taking the short hike with the pups through the area until I saw the “Beware of Rattlesnake” sign. I could just picture Rocky trying to attack one of those nasty critters. No thank you!

So, in conclusion on Idaho – No idea what we missed, but we are sure we missed a lot. Perhaps we will make it back there someday and see some of the real beauty that the state does have to offer. In the mean time we will spend our next 10 days in Helper, Utah and then begin our journey south.

See you on the road,

Dave and Theresa