Today is the day that the vacation truly began. No rushing to get on the road; no long distance driving contemplated; No particular schedule to keep. We intended to just sit back and enjoy the scenery. We rolled out of our Elko camp about a quarter to nine, stopped at a local Albertsons supermarket to pick up some milk, then jumped on Interstate 80 for the forty-mile run to Wells, Nevada where we planned to catch Interstate 93 north towards Twin Falls Idaho. Aside from a bit of road construction we had an easy run.
We took the wrong exit when we got to Wells, which ended up being a good thing since we got to cruise by a slice of the residential neighborhoods on the outskirts of Wells that neither of us had ever seen. Nice new retirement homes adjoined the golf course and the homes were obviously up-scale and expensive. Despite having to take a short gravel stretch that lay at the end of a series of zig-zags through a neighborhood of modular homes, we managed to wend our way east until we found where Interstate 93 intersected Interstate 80. Then, before we left town, we gassed up the rig, then began our sojourn north towards the Idaho border. It was still only about 10:00 A.M.
If you've never traveled the route between the one-horse town of Wells, Nevada and the thriving metropolis of Twin Falls, Idaho on Route 93, you're certainly missing some of the most intriguing stretches of high-desert landscape we have ever seen. The distance is something just over one hundred miles and it's two-lane highway all the way. But the magnificent vistas roll away to the horizon and are something you will have a hard time duplicating anywhere else. On both sides of the narrow stretch of blacktop, we saw huge mahogany-colored outcroppings where ancient lava flows had been broken and thrust above the surface of the land by plate tectonics. We saw other areas where the lava was arranged in huge, towering outcroppings looking much like a pile of biscuits on a plate. I suspect that those volcanic piles were once created beneath the surface of a long-vanished body of water.
Though Route 93 is pretty thoroughly traveled by cars, RVs, and 18-wheelers, most of the land through which the highway travels appears to be sparsely inhabited. We saw only a few ranches on the whole 100-mile stretch. Folks who think that Nevada's Route 50 is the loneliest road in American simply haven't traveled Route 93 to Twin Falls. We passed one vacationer on the drive today who had somehow shredded the left rear tire on his travel trailer. Fortunately, the trailer was a double-axle model and still had one tire on that side that was okay. But he didn't appear to be attacking the problem himself so I suspect that he hadn't thought of a way to jack the trailer up so he could remove the shredded tire. There was no shoulder of any consequence on either side so there was no way we would have been any help to him even we had a jack that would lift the trailer.
At one point we came upon the entrance to the San Jacinto Ranch and we pulled in and parked in their driveway so we could get out and stretch our legs. The ranch house was at least a mile away and we thought we'd be able to see anyone coming who would want to get out on the highway past our rig. Of course once we had disembarked and walked a hundred feet away from the rig, along came a ranch hand from out on the highway who was forced to use a bit of ingenuity to squeak by our parked RV. But he was good-natured about it and we apologized to him for blocking his access. He was a young Hispanic chap who smiled and laughed a lot and told us that folks were always parking in the ranch entrance and it didn't bother him a bit. He told us he really liked working at the ranch and he evidently didn't mind at all being 50 some odd miles from the nearest civilization. In the end we wished each other a great day and went our separate ways, but once again we had been reminded that folks on the frontier are just downright neighborly and friendly most of the time.
Once we reached Twin Falls it happened to be lunch time so we set about finding a nice piece of shade in which to park. After considerable looking we had failed to find a suitable park setting, so we wheeled into a Swenesons Supermarket that we happened upon (photo above left) and found a patch of greenery to arrange outside the dining room window. It wasn't shady, but it was mostly green.
During lunch I did a bit of computer research and decided on the Herrett planetarium and adjacent museums for our afternoon entertainment. So, when lunch was over, we fired up the GPS and it informed us that the Herrett was actually quite near us. So off we went and were soon pulling up to the campus of the College of Southern Idaho wherein we were led to believe by the trusty GPS that the planetarium and museum would be located. Unfortunately, we just didn't know where. The campus is composed of acres and acres of beautiful lawns and mature trees, but not much in the way of roadside directions. With a sigh, we parked the rig in a lightly-used parking lot on the south side of the campus and set out to find a human who could help us locate our quarry. This we did in short order, but he informed us that the planetarium building was a good half mile away on the other side of the campus. "No problem," we told him, "we need the steps."
Well, we soon had cause to regret the decision as the temperature was in the mid nineties and we had forgotten our hiking boots! But soon enough we arrived and discovered quite a nice museum that held just about anything and everything you could imagine. We saw a mastodon and a sabre-toothed tiger (2nd photo upper right). We saw an amazing variety of native American crafts and historic objects. We saw displays on geology and fossils, even from as far away Saudi Arabia. We even saw an Andean mummy. The display that turned out to be my personal favorite was the list of native plants and examples of rope that could be made from them. That was really interesting and, of course, useful if you chanced to be stuck in a deserted patch of desert and wanted to climb somewhere up high to get away from critters trying to kill you.
Once we'd seen the museum, we hiked back to our rig in the ever-present heat and gratefully got inside and cranked up the air conditioner. After that it was a fairly short ride out to our evening's camp called the Twin Falls "93" Park for it's location on route 93 presumably.
So there you have it. We had a spectacular and relaxing day full of new vistas and discoveries. Tomorrow I have no idea where we're going and where we might end up for the night, so you will be just as surprised as we will when you see the blog tomorrow. So until then, we wish you happy travels and new discoveries of your own. As Slim Barnard used to say, "Go out and be a Happy Wanderer." Right now I have one of Slim's Happy Wanderer bumper stickers on the rear window of the RV. It was sent to me by Slim's son to reward me for still remembering his dad. For extra credit, try looking up Slim and Henrietta Barnard and the Happy Wanderers TV show.
Long before I could even drive and the Happy Wanderers were on the TV, I'd insist that Mom take me down to the Ford Dealer every week after the show had aired so I could pick up that week's Happy Wanderers map to the exotic places they had visited. That was fifty-five years ago and I still have those maps in my collection. In those days I just knew that I wanted to be a Happy Wanderer myself, and in addition to Slim's maps handed out at the Ford Dealers I collected articles from Sunset magazine about all the places the magazine's contributors had visited and wanted to recommend to the magazine's readers. I think I even have a few of those articles around somewhere. Perhaps it was fate from the very beginning and now I finally get to live what I only imagined fifty-five years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment