Blogs from Idaho, United States, North America - page 7

August 4, 2017 Weather: 105 and sunny Hours Driving: 6 hours 39 minutes States Drive Thru: Oregon and Idaho Miles: 431 Restaurants: Boise Fry Co. Movies: Games: Books: Dog On It (Biddy), Dunkirk (Matt), Tuesdays At Morries (audio-everyone) Hotel: Springfield Marriott Today, we ate breakfast, found a post office to send postcards to themselves, and set off for Boise Idaho. Uneventful drive. It took us almost 7 hours. We listened to Tuesdays at Morries. Everyone seems to like it. We arrived a Springfield Inn Marriott to 105 degrees and it felt like it. Boise is a really nice, clean, updated city. We really like it. Lots of restaurants and nice places to be outside. We are impressed. The kids swam a bit, then we headed out to dinner to a place recommended by my sister-in- law ... read more

CANFIELD Underway at 0645 am. The impoverished little town of Caliente has a restaurant called the Branding Iron but it only can afford to open three days a week and Tuesday is not one of them. I missed my breakfast, got no coffee and left town a bit surly. There is another little eating place called the Silver Café up in Pioche. It is open six days a week, but Tuesday is not one of them. The reason for choosing this route up Hwy 93 was to visit the little community of Eagle Valley. My other great-great grampa, Henry K. Chamberlain, was a pioneer settler there and I was hoping to find a friendly Mormon to show me around the old fort, and maybe see where Henry raised his family. They were all peacefully slumbering though, ... read more

Mileage 301.2 We got up and ate our breakfast then came back to the room to book hotels for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and finish up the blog. Then we were off. We had googled to try to find a welcome center for Idaho since we were just over the border and needed maps (can’t use google maps if you don’t have internet and you don’t have your destination in before you lose internet). Google last night didn’t find anything. Of course we left the hotel, drove maybe 2-3 miles and there it was. Oh, well, we bought maps last night. The speed limit on I 84 is 80 mph. Cool. We passed a truck pulling a triple trailer. That was a first for me. Further down the road we decided to take a detour and ... read more

Monday, July 3, 2017 found me heading north to White Bird ID to ride the jet boat through Hells Canyon in the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area. My journey began northbound on ID 55, the Payette River Scenic Byway – a road I had traversed in a southerly direction from Banks ID on Wednesday of the previous week and had intentionally omitted from my list of scenic drive options during my week in Boise ID. After the short drive to Banks, everything was “sight unseen.” For almost the entire drive on ID 55, I was accompanied by some variation of the (adjective) Salmon River, adjectives being Big, Little, Middle, South, etc. There were two long sloping up grades as well as the requisite accompanying down grades. The first three-quarters of the drive was saturated with both ... read more

In my final blog of last year – New Places, New Friends, New Truck, New Home – I outlined the whys and wherefores of my delayed departure for the first leg of Chapter 2017 of The Great Adventure. During the final 2-3 weeks I spent in Apache Junction AZ, the temperatures were in the 100s and 110s every day, frequently teasing the 120-degree mark. The forecast for the first couple of days following my departure predicted the temperatures would break the all-time Phoenix record of 122. Before I set out for Las Vegas NV, well after my planned departure date, my cell phone had what I thought was a terminal melt down. A little cooling time in the cabin of my new (to me) tow vehicle cured the phone’s issues. The trip to Roadrunner RV Park ... read more