Day 4 -- Idaho Falls, Idaho to Bozeman, Montana -- 211.7 Miles

Today was the the day we didn't go to Yellowstone Park. We DID travel up Interstate 20 to the town of West Yellowstone, just outside the western entrance to the Park, to have our lunch. But once lunch was over, we resisted the urge to give Yellowstone "just one more try," and instead we jumped on Route 191 that runs past the park entrance heading north as we set our sights on Bozeman, Montana for our evening camp.

Recently, as we were driving through Idaho and trying to decide if we should cut through the park and give ourselves a small advantage in our efforts to head east toward Minneapolis-Saint Paul, I asked Concetta to look up the guest count in Yellowstone Park for various months of the year. I was simply astounded. Traffic starts low through the winter and early spring months and runs around thirty thousand guests a month. By May it increases more than ten fold and you see totals like 400,000 guests a month. Then, as you tabulate guest totals for July you're often seeing counts like 800,000, even 900,000 a month. Needless to say, those totals are what finally decided us against the "shortcut." We just had to be satisfied with skirting the park to the north and turning east at Bozeman.

The first half of our journey today carried us through prime Idaho agricultural lands of potatoes, wheat and hay. The potato plants looked so healthy, that it started us wondering if we'd pass a roadside vegetable stand where we might find freshly-picked Idaho potatoes. But no such stand appeared, unfortunately. Once again seeing all the picturesque farm fields made me wish that states would offer more pullouts for photographers like me to grab a shot now and again. It's exceedingly frustrating to see a good shot but have no way snap it.

Somewhat before we reached the town of West Yellowstone, the terrain switched from gently rolling agricultural lands to craggy and mountainous forest lands full of lodge-pole pines and the occasional stands of fir and aspen. Though driving in mountainous terrain takes more concentration, you find yourself not minding tackling it at a slower pace while you enjoy the awesome vistas and the cooler mountain air.

I sought out our lunch spot specifically because we'd been there before; I knew the Yellowstone Historic Center Museum was in the middle of West Yellowstone, had a parking lot large enough for our rig, and provided easy access to surrounding shops should we want to grab a souvenir or two. Fortunately, as we rolled into town I immediately recognized where we were and was able to navigate right to our destination. We had to do some maneuvering to avoid blocking another RV in the parking lot, but that worked out okay.

Though I hadn't realized it when I chose the lunch stop, Route 191 to Bozeman lay just scant feet from where we were parked. When lunch was over, we simply rolled out of the parking lot and, moments later, we were on our way out of town.

The first thing we noticed as we headed north was that the skies ahead kept getting darker and darker. Soon the occasional rain drop showed up on the windshield followed by a dozen more. Fortunately, it never did rain hard, but the rest of the day the light over the forests and wetlands was flat, subdued, and dismal -- just the opposite one needs to take photographs. We stopped now and again to snap a few shots, but never captured much of interest.

Well, we did capture one thing of interest. As we motored beside the Gallatin River we caught up with a half dozen rubber boats full of river-rafters. Though the rafters didn't have the look of relaxed old hands, as each clutched their paddles, they seemed to be doing their best to enjoy themselves. There was no way to photograph them where we were, so Concetta and I raced down the road in their direction of travel, then pulled over where we could wait for their appearance. The light was still pretty dull, and I would of liked to have been closer to the river, but I did my best to grab a few shots of their progress downstream.

After shooting the river rafters, we stopped one more time to stretch our legs at a riverside campground. It was my intention to secure a nice river rock for my growing collection at home, especially if I could find a nice "corner rock." When you're building a river-rock piller, say one 8 feet tall, you need 32 feet of corner rocks to make the pillar look well-executed and symmetrical. Corner rocks are the most difficult to find as most rocks are strictly irregular. I also needed my rock to be some color other than volcanic gray. I nice cream color would be nice I thought, or perhaps green.

So once we had parked, Concetta and walked across the bridge to the east side of the river, then I picked my way down to the rushing water. Almost immediately I found the perfect corner rock. It's corner was very nearly a perfect 90 degrees. As a bonus, the rock was the color of vanilla ice cream.

Not wanting to take the very first rock I came to, I picked my way from bolder to bolder and got right down to the river's edge. There I encountered a small "friend" who was probably out looking for his dinner amidst the insect eggs. After snapping his photo, I bid him farewell and we each headed off in our chosen direction.

After about ten minutes of rock hunting I decided that I had seen no other rocks that were as good as the very first one I saw. So I climbed back up the bank, grabbed the perfect corner rock, and then climbed up to the road where Concetta stood chatting with a local fisherman.

And that was about it for the day. Before looking for our camp we did a bit of grocery shopping, then headed for a camp recommended by Concetta's IPhone. We hoped that the lateness of the day -- it was about 4:30 pm. -- wouldn't mean that all the spaces had been spoken for. Well, when we arrived at this first-choice camp we indeed discovered that all the spaces had been occupied or reserved. But the wonderfully friendly clerk rang one of her competitors and asked if he had a spot for us and to my relief he did. So it was back in the RV for a short 3-mile trip further east and we were soon setting up in a perfectly marvelous hilltop camp that was a tad expensive, but sported just beautiful, reasonably-spaced camp sites.

So there you have it. Tomorrow we will continue east on Interstate Route 90, the same route we used to reach our hilltop camp. Our short-term destination is roughly in the neighborhood of the Custer battlefield which lies very near our intended transition from Interstate 90 to Montana Route 212 which we hope will carry us toward Minneapolis. This is a land that is chock full of history in every direction, so I wouldn't be surprised if we get distracted by some historic site and make no progress whatsoever.

And that's it for now. The Happy Wanderers wish you exciting travels and intriguing discoveries on your adventures across America.

Day 3 -- Twin Falls to Idaho Falls, Idaho -- 184 Miles

Today promised to be easy from the start. First of all, we were camped next to Route 93 which made it super easy to head north out of Twin Falls since that's the route we wanted to take toward Idaho Falls. Second, we both got a great night's sleep and didn't get up until 6:30 which meant we'd be well-rested for whatever came our way. Third and last, I've fallen back easily into the routine of setting up and breaking down the rig so I encountered no problems in pumping the tanks and stowing the gear.

Despite the fact that we overslept a bit, we were somewhat earlier than usual leaving camp at 8:45 a.m. We plugged in the GPS and fed in a fictitious address in Shoshone, Idaho, along our intended route and sure enough camping next to Route 93 had been a great idea. The GPS just had us exit the camp and head directly north and out of Twin Falls. Once we crossed the Snake River, we stopped to top up the tank, then we were quickly back on the highway. When driving the RV I never let the gas gauge drop below a half tank if I can help it. Since we travel the two-lane highways whenever possible, you never know when the next gas station will appear on the horizon.

We very quickly arrived at the fictitious address we had fed into the GPS for the town of Shoshone. From there we switched to Idaho Route 20 and headed east toward the town of Idaho Falls. Idaho Falls didn't hold any particular significance, but was just a probable destination for the next camping opportunity. Traveling Route 20, we soon entered the boundaries of the Craters of the Moon national park and began to see ever larger fields of volcanic rock. We were intrigued, since the rock was, for the most part, coal black and jagged and not covered by any sort of vegetation.

I thought perhaps that the lava fields were probably just a few tens of thousands of years old, but later in the day when we stopped at the Craters Visitor Center, we would find out that the further you were away from Yellowstone Park the older the lava fields became. On the western fringes of the Craters of the Moon site the lava fields were some 10 million years old. Now THAT'S old!

Since Concetta and I had toured the lava fields a couple of times in the past, we opted not to take the tour this time. Still, the visitor center parking lot had ample space for our rig so we decided to stay, tour the visitor center, and then have lunch with the singular vistas of the park in our living room window. If you've not yet seen the Craters of the Moon Park, by all means put it on your next vacation itinerary. The visitor center is quite thorough in their explanation of the ancient events in the park, and I found that their library of reading material was just excellent. I especially liked their variety of books on the subject of geology. If I hadn't been already carry a half dozen books on the subject, I would have definitely picked up a couple of their excellent guides.

After leaving the Craters of the moon park there wasn't much of a historic nature to see save the magnificent scope of the Idaho prairie. We passed hundreds of acres of corn, kale, potatoes, hay, alfalfa, and possibly other green things we couldn't identify at 60 miles an hour. Still the landscape varies from obviously volcanic with not much vegetation at all, to full-blown agricultural fields with only the occasional volcanic outcroppings to mar the beauty of the magnificent fields of crops.

Possibly the most intriguing geologic features of the Idaho prairie in this area is the many volcanic cones rising up from the sage lands that mark the existence of extinct volcanoes. The land is so flat and golden that the black and burnt-red volcanic cones are startling in their incongruity with the surroundings.

One thing you usually have to contend with when motoring along in your RV is that very nearly everyone wants to go faster, and usually a LOT faster than you want to travel. For me, cruising along at 60 mph is a fine speed for taking in the surroundings, as well as avoiding panic stops when you want to pull over for some reason. But the bulk of traffic seems intent on risking life and limb to get around you. Naturally, I pull over if space is provided for such a maneuver, but much of the time it's not. More than once today we found ourselves holding our breath as cars went past us at seventy-five or eighty miles per hour and just managed to squeak back into line ahead of oncoming cars. Fortunately today most of the two-lane highway we traveled was open to passing, so traffic didn't pile up behind us too much.

When we were approaching Idaho Falls, Concetta pulled out her trusty IPhone and queried suitable camps. After reading about a couple, she checked the GPS for its recommendation and discovered the same ones listed. By this time we were cruising through the outskirts of the city and I once again began looking for a hardware store. While traveling yesterday I mentioned to Concetta that I had forgotten to pack the rock hammer, which would be necessary if we wanted to do a little rock hunting. I've also been meaning to look for a couple of hardwood handles for two hammer heads I brought along for which I have been unable to find suitable handles online.

Fortunately, before we had to head north toward our camp for the evening, I spied a True Value Hardware store just off to the left which appeared to have ample parking for the rig. You can't always assume that you can squeeze 32 feet of RV into a strip mall's parking lot. But the choice of True Value appeared to be just what I needed. Not only did they have the rock hammer, but a HUGE selection of hammer handles to pick from. So in one opportunity I was able to fulfill all my shopping desires.

Leaving True Value, we soon found our camp ground. The camp hosts said they had a spot for us, which didn't turn out to be in the nicest area of the camp, but in fairness they usually reserve the nicest spots for long-term guests. The spot turned out to be basically level and I had the rig set up in a jiffy. Concetta meantime had my cocktail mixed, the pretzels plated, and we were soon enjoying the remainder of the afternoon under the extended awning.

Thank goodness the techs back in Carson City had been able to fix the broken awning last fall. The awning had broken the last time we were in Montana and there were no spare parts ANYWHERE to be found. Now, not only do I carry two sets of spare pivot parts for the awning structure, but I also have an extra awning extension arm. When you're RVing, spare parts is the name of the game in a lot of cases.

So ends our third day on the road. We've had great traveling weather. It's been just a bit warm, but this afternoon we're not running the air conditioner and things seem just fine. Concetta has been sitting in the shade reading her book for the past hour and, well, you know what I've been doing -- pursuing that skill I acquired in the 7th grade as only one of a couple of boys in the typing class.

Tomorrow we're headed east again. We're skirting Yellowstone Park this time. In fact, our encounter with lame-brained, buffalo-petting tourists and huge irritating traffic jams in the park during our 2017 visit may have cured me forever from wanting to visit Yellowstone. This time we'll cross north of the park and then begin to edge our way further east in hopes of catching South Dakota Route 212 toward Minneapolis-Saint Paul. There I have to pick up a couple of front seats for a 1929 Ford which I purchased on Ebay.

Of course taking the northern route was planned from the beginning as we hoped that cooler temperatures would prevail up there. So far, the temperatures and weather have been pretty reminiscent of Carson City. But you never know, they had several inches of hail in the Dakotas last week. Maybe things will begin to cool down a bit when we reach the Dakotas.

So that's all for now from the "Happy Wanderers." We wish you the best of traveling conditions as you take to the road for your wandering adventures. And if you see us somewhere out there on the Great Plains or in the High Lonesome, give us a wave!

Day 2 -- Elko, Nevada to Twin Falls, Idaho -- 174 Miles

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.

Day 1 -- Carson City, Nevada to Elko, Nevada -- 320 Miles

Today we began our 2019 vacation to the far off land of Ohio by making the extra long (for us) drive from Carson City where we live, to Elko, Nevada in our state's northeastern corner. Usually we only drive about 150 miles a day, which allows us ample time to see the local sites surrounding our campsite of the previous night. However today, since we had seen the sites along Interstate 80 so many times, we opted to double our usual mileage which would allow us to reach Twin Falls, Idaho tomorrow night while still sticking to our usual distance of about 150 miles.

But first we had some chores to do along the Interstate 395 corridor. First of all we needed to top up our propane tank which had not been filled since we returned from my fifty-year high school reunion trip of 2018. This we were able to do quite easily since just over the hill to the south of our house was an RV camp that had a suitable propane filling station. Once that was done, and rather quickly since we were the only ones in line to have our tank filled, we headed north on Hwy 395 in the direction of our next task -- a nice bath.

What with all the frantic comings and goings over the past few months as we got ready to hit the road for another adventure, we just hadn't gotten around to washing the Los Angeles dirt off the RV. Add in a winter of regular snowfall and snow melt, and the outside of the rig was positively grungy. So our next stop was the big rig truck wash in Sparks east of Reno. We had determined in advance that we would only stop for a wash if there wasn't too many big rigs ahead of us. So we were excited when we rounded the curve before the washing bay and discovered that there was no one at all in line ahead of us. Then, for the mere cash outlay of a dollar a foot, we were immediately ushered into the bay and the boys set about making the rig look like new.

After the wash job we jumped on Interstate 80, cranked up the air conditioner to ward off the hot desert air that had ratcheted into the mid nineties by then, and cruised on down the road toward Elko and our anticipated visit to Elko's California Trail Interpretive Center. We always love taking advantage of the Trail Center as the exhibits are wonderful, the staff super dedicated and friendly, and the opportunity for pictures pretty nice as well. In addition I always like to look over their selection of gifts and books on the western history and the westward expansion experience. This time I scored a jar of Raspberry/Rhubarb jam containing real sugar and no corn sweetener, and a copy of Keith Heyer Meldahl's 2007 book, "Hard Road West," which is subtitled "History and Geology along the Gold Rush Trail." Since I'm a huge sucker for anything to do with geology, I snapped it right up.

In between Sparks and Elko we stopped occasionally to stretch our legs and get some steps on the pedometer. We also tarried awhile for lunch in the slumbering town of Lovelock, a town that was especially hard hit by the twin whammies of being bypassed by the interstate, and the incredible gas mileage that cars come with nowadays that make mid-state stops unnecessary. The rest of the ride we just admired the local flora, puzzled over the sometimes strange geology of the Great Basin, and tried to stay well away from the 18-wheelers. Tomorrow we should be back on two-lanes after we leave Wells, Nevada, about forty miles from here, and head north on Route 93.