Seattle Trip – Day 2 – Still heading towards Boise

Day two went waaaay better than day one. Morning arrived sunny and beautiful.

It was a nice campsite, tucked into the trees. I was sorry to have to immediately leave our pretty campsite that we had not had time to enjoy the previous evening, having arrived far too late.

There were several trails in the area and it would have been nice to go for a hike. But we had another 7 hours of driving to our campsite in Idaho. So we made coffee, went for a quick walk around the campground, packed up and headed out.

We made a mental note to come back someday. It looked like a great area. The only downside was no cell reception, which is a common issue in southern Utah. 

As we drove up towards Salt Lake City, I took several photos of these mountains.

We couldn’t figure it out – is that snow or white rock? It’s July and 100 degrees out, but I remember being snowed on in the mountains just east of Salt Lake in July several years ago, even though it was very hot down in the valley. It’s all about elevation! In the end though, we decided it was probably white rock. We definitely want to come back and check it out someday.

For lunch we bought Greek take-out and ate at a park. Actually, weirdly, the park we had identified on the map was closed, so we ate in the shade of a tree on the edge of a grassy drainage basin right outside the park. Looks like a park to me!

In case you’re wondering, that loop around Biska’s nose keeps her calm and keeps her from pulling my arm off in excitement when we walk. It’s called a “gentle leader” and if you have a dog who pulls too hard on walks, I greatly recommend it. It’s not tight and doesn’t hurt her at all. It’s not a muzzle, and no, she doesn’t bite. She is just very exuberantly happy about life! She wants to run up to and interact with every bird, person, dog, child, squirrel, and anything that moves! At least she’s not timid, right?

That evening’s campsite was in a county park along a creek right outside of Twin Falls.

We arrived at 6 pm instead of 9 pm. What a difference three hours made! I did astoundingly better. Instead of a nightmarish never-ending drive in the dark, I wasn’t even tired yet. So I arrived cheerful and ready to see the sights. We had time for a walk, a leisurely dinner of Greek leftovers from lunch, and then another walk.

The park had a paved walking path that went on for at least a couple of miles along a creek.

One section of the path included a challenging frisbee golf course.

John especially wanted me to take a picture of this waterfall, but I have a true Oregonian’s disdain for small, unimpressive, unphotogenic dribbles of falling water. So John took the photo. It’s a nice photo, and there’s a waterfall there if you look closely.

It had been very hot and dry, but right around bedtime the evening mosquitos suddenly appeared in droves and chased us back to our van.

It was still very hot, so we started up our air conditioner. The van has two air conditioners. We have the regular air conditioner that most vehicles have, which only runs when the engine is running. We’ve also installed a small portable unit. It actually takes up quite a lot of space under our sink, but it is very much worth it.

The point of our portable unit is we can run it off electricity from the campsite plug without having to run our engine. We could even run it off our own solar generated power, but probably not for long before it drained our set of RV batteries we have installed in a row under our bunk. We can run it indefinitely if we have a source of electricity. Our campsite came with an electrical outlet, so we decided to leave the AC running all night. The way it’s designed, the fan runs continuously regardless of whether it’s cooling or not. We turned it the fan down to it’s lowest setting for the night, but it was still a lot of airflow in such a small space.

In the middle of the night I realized I had a sore throat. I figured it was probably due to the constant blowing of the air conditioner only 4 feet from my face. I considered turning it off, but didn’t know what the outside temps were doing. The daytime temps were well into the 100’s, so the outside temps could be in the 80’s. I was too asleep to figure it out, so I just left it running.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.