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Published: July 13th 2021
This year for vacation, I had originally planned on walking the Camino again, this time with my wife! Unfortunately, Spain and most of the places along the Camino were not fully open, nor were military space available flights... available. Pardon the seeming redundancy. Instead, my wife had expressed a desire to either visit Alaska or the United States Northwest. We opted for the Northwest, and I spent a good bit of time exploring possible sights. After showing this info to my wife, along with locations of nearby KOAs, I started making reservations and developing web pages for each place.
A quick rundown before I really start Day 1. We fly out of Greenville/Spartanburg International Airport on July 12th at 6am, change planes at Dallas/Fort Worth, and arrive at Boise Idaho's airport around 11am, Mountain Time. We then will rent a car from Enterprise, and drive a giant 17-day loop to Twin Falls in Idaho, Livingston in Montana (Yellowstone), Missoula in Montana, Spokane in Washington, The Olympic Peninsula near Seattle, then down the Oregon Coast and back to Boise to return our car and fly back home on July 29th. You will have to read my future blogs to know what
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Manoli ordering lunch at The Big City Coffee and Cafesights, besides Yellowstone, we picked.
OK, now for Day 1 of our Great Northwest adventure. I had to work a normal Sunday at Hertz, getting home around 7pm, even though we would be catching our flight to Boise at 6am Monday. I was able to get to bed around midnight instead of my usual 1 or 2am. My wife Manoli, who usually falls asleep watching TV around 10pm or so, was still up when I got to bed, from being anxious I imagine. We woke up just after 4am, packed up the car and headed to GSP airport. I work for Hertz Rental Car at GSP, but had never used the airport for travel. The roads were pretty empty at 4:30am and we arrived at the rental car garage just before 5am. I was able to park our car in the rental car garage, as a Hertz employee, saving the cost of long-term parking or bothering one of our daughters at this hour.
Everything had gone well, until we reached the American Airlines area and saw the dozens and dozens of people already waiting in line. The wait was somewhat eased when they announced that domestic travelers could
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Our lunches at The Big City Coffee and Cafe use a different line. We quickly got our tickets, paid an extra 30 bucks for our checked bags (which I thought I'd already paid for), and headed for security and our gate, A1. We almost got delayed again when the TSA guy checked my ID and told me I had to go back downstairs to the AA counter because my "personal flight information" was not found in his computer! Fortunately, another agent saw he was having trouble and showed him how to verify my ID manually. Apparently the barcode on my SC Driver's License was too worn to be scanned. When we reached our gate, they were already boarding. Our tickets were in group 8, so we still had time and I was able to buy a cold coffee drink for the flight. Also, apparently the plane was out of overhead luggage space when they reached our group 8, but again we lucked out because they told us our bags were okay!
Apparently our trip was not going to be without its share of hiccups, as we ended up taking off over 20 minutes late, and our connecting flight in Dallas was originally a bit short already. at 45
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Artsy sign at Rhodes Skate Park, downtown Boise minutes! We landed in at Dallas, at Gate 36, and found out that luckily our connecting flight was departing from nearby Gate 32, since they again were already boarding when we got there! After another short flight, just under 3 hours, and another time zone to the West, we set down at Boise's airport, quite tired already since we'd slept little, eaten less, and as usual couldn't even nap much on the planes.
Boise's airport is pretty much typical of a medium sized, busy airport. We quickly found our luggage and sat down to see about an Uber ride to the Enterprise car rental place in downtown Boise. We'd opted for this after we saw how much more expensive the airport Enterprise was, figuring they could pick us up at the airport. Unfortunately, they don't do that, I assume so as to not take away from airport site too much. Manoli had a bit of trouble getting the Uber app installed (first downloading the Uber driver app LOL), but finally we got confirmation and went upstairs to wait. Uber wanted $25 for the trip, but by this point we didn't really care. My wife and I both assumed the
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The Rhodes Skate Park driver was hard of hearing, since he didn't seem to want to chat, or even answer my wife's questions. He did get us there quickly enough, at around noon, and I gave him a few dollars in tip. When we first went to the rental car counter, the guy noticed our reservation was for 5pm, and tried to give us our car early, but still keeping the return time at 5pm on the 28th. Unfortunately, another guy, a supervisor I assumed, told him he couldn't do that. Oh well, we figured we could spend a few hours eating a much needed lunch, along with a little sightseeing. We hadn't considered the fact that it was over 90 degrees, and climbing, and that there was very little to see in that part of town. Even the Basque Market my wife wanted to visit was closed on Mondays.
We ended up eating lunch at The Big City Coffee and Cafe. It was a very hippyish, rustic place, but the food was quite good. My wife had a humongous salad and I had a delicious Belgian with lots of fruit. On a cute side note, while my wife was finishing off her
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A view from downtown Boise salad, I noticed her looking at the map of Boise Enterprise had given us, and seemed to be treating the map as if it was on her cell phone, pinching and spreading to zoom in! I mentioned it, figuring I was just imagining things, but she admitted that was exactly what she had done. After lunch, we wandered around a bit, trying to find interesting sights, and frequent shade, but by 3pm we were beat, so we returned to the rental place, ready to leave the Oregon coast a bit earlier to make it to Boise by 3pm. Fortunately, the guy was able to give us our car, and still leave it as a 5pm return. We got a 2020 Hyundai Elantra, technically a mid-sized car, but to me it seemed as big as my wife's Honda Accord, which is a full-sized car. We loaded up our gear and headed out to find a gas station. The guy at Enterprise told us that unfortunately the gas tank was only 1/4 full, but he'd put it down as empty. He also told us the nearest place to go for gas.
The gas station the Enterprise guy had suggested gave us
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Manoli enjoying a river walk after lunch some more problems. I tried my credit card, but it showed a read error, so I went inside and had him put $30 for our pump. Unfortunately, I had failed to read the sign that said only Premium and Diesel available. It did pump about 25 cents worth of regular, then 42 of premium but then stopped. By this point I was pretty fed up, so after being assured our credit card would not be charged extra,we got back on the road to our KOA in Twin Falls, quite sure we would find gas soon... and we did! After filling up our tank, and Manoli getting a free banana for buying a cup of coffee, we jumped back on Interstate 84 East for a bit over 100 miles to reach our KOA for the next two nights, Twin Falls/Jerome KOA Holiday. Believe it or not, the speed limit on this interstate was 80! I was getting rather tired and a bit sleepy, so I left my wife drive most of the way while I took a short nap. We arrived at the KOA with no further problems, checked in, and went to our Kamping Kabin. The cabin was a nice
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The river we strolled along surprise, with good a/c, a small refrigerator, and even a large screen TV above the door. We started unpacking, preparing to head out to Walmart for some drinks and maybe snacks for tomorrow. Unfortunately, we discovered what my wife thought were full-sized sheets, were actually twin, so we added new sheets to our shopping list. The KOA has a nice swimming pool, and a nightly ice cream social, along with a well-stocked office. The restrooms were individual restrooms and showers, making that experience much nicer.
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After unpacking, we headed out to the nearest WalMart, about 5 miles away. When we entered, the lady at the door told us "no cash", so I assumed they didn't have change and were only accepting credit cards. A bit weird, but not a problem for us. We found some nice freshly cook chicken and potato wedges for dinner, a complete set of full-size sheets, some bread with almond butter and honey for snacks tomorrow, a case of water, and a small 12-pack of Starbucks Frappuccino. We went back to the KOA to eat and relax, and spend some time on this blog. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of photos for today, since
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The Twin Falls / Jerome KOA Holiday we didn't do or see much. Tomorrow we plan on visiting the City of Rocks and Shoshone Falls, both of which should be pretty spectacular!
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