SLC ----- Idaho

May 23-29 – KOA Salt Lake City, Utah

May 30-31 – Wasatch View Estates and RV Park, Ogden, Utah

June 1 – Chubbuck Wal-Mart Supercenter Parking Lot, Chubbock, Idaho

June 2-8 – Bannock County Fairgrounds, Pocatello, Idaho

June 9-13- Jefferson County Lake Campgrounds in Rigby, Idaho.

June 14-19 – Juniper Campground in Ririe, Idaho

June 3

So that is where we’ve been since I last posted. Today it is only June 3 and we plan to be here at the fairgrounds until next Wednesday. That’s our plan anyway. Today we have to fold up the camper and take it in to get the front end alignment done as one of our front tires is wearing unevenly. We are hopeful that this will make it safe for us to continue to Billings, MT where we will likely get all of our tires replaced as they are getting kind of old. This will cost as much as many of the cars that we have purchased in our life.

Since I last wrote, we’ve had some wonderful times. We stayed for a week at the KOA in Salt Lake City which is where Kelly and Jason came to see us. They flew in from Philadelphia on Friday, 5/27 and stayed until Monday. So we got to meet Jason and are pretty pleased that he seems to be a good guy and he really likes Kelly.

When we were traveling through southern Utah we moved frequently never staying in any one place for longer than 3 days. When we got to Salt Lake we stayed for a whole week at the KOA there and that was really nice. We’ve had quite a bit of time to fill since we came into Idaho so we stayed a week in Pocatello. There is not a lot going on there and we were ready to leave when we did. As we get closer to Yellowstone Park though it is harder to find places to stay. Many RV Parks are full. We found a county Park just north of Idaho Falls where we can stay for only 5 consecutive days. Since we don’t have sewer that’s about as long as we can stay in one spot anyway.

June 15

We moved about 15 miles to one of the nicest campgrounds we’ve stayed in. Juniper Campground is about 10 miles northeast of Idaho Falls on the Ririe Reservoir. The RV App, AllStays identifies the campground as being private but the sign up front identifies it as a Department of Interior land. The land is surrounding a good size reservoir. It has the amenities of a well run private RV park – large pull-throughs with full hook-ups, level paved pads, trees trimmed back. The huge amount of space between sites, the price ($18 per night) and the location away from major highways is more like we find in national forest campgrounds. We sit well above the lake which is bordered by a steep canyon with Juniper trees and sage brush framing the top in somewhat arid land. The campground is well irrigated with thick mowed lawns. In this part of Idaho it is easy to forget that this really is a pretty arid climate. There are acres and acres of fields in unending green vistas. Potatoes, wheat and hay with irrigation systems constantly pumping out water with any kind of sprinkler you can imagine. Water spraying into the air shooting out over the fields without regard for loss to evaporation there is so much of it. Eat your heart out California. The abundance of water from the Snake River and the aquifer beneath it make this land the farmer’s dream. To the east and the west, the snow topped mountains with rain clouds above them most afternoons are the lifeblood of this valley. A person could really live here. From where I’m sitting I can see across to the hilltop on the other side of the lake which has windmills lined up across the wheat fields. If you look at Google maps of where I am by Ririe, ID you can see huge green circles which are the fields where they use a sprinkler system which is stationary on one end with a pipe extending out about 2000 feet or so with water jets spraying along the pipe and ending with water shooting out the end another 50 feet (or so). This entire apparatus rotates around the stationary end creating perfect circles of green.

Choir Practice 

This post is likely to end up kind of disjointed since it has been so long since I last wrote. It seems like a long time ago that we spend a good week in Salt Lake City. We were able to get some shopping done and check out the city so that when Kelly and Jason arrived we had some suggestions as to what we should spend our time seeing. The KOA where we stayed is conveniently located by the Utah Transit Authority Green Line for an easy train ride to Temple Square.

We used that when we went to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearsal on Thursday night and again on Saturday when we toured Temple Square with Kelly and Jason.

The Temple we could not enter

Kelly and me in the Great Salt Lake

We spend some hours getting to know the Church of the Latter Day Saints and touring their beautiful Temple grounds and then checking out their State Capitol and on Sunday we went to Antelope Island State Park in the Great Salt Lake to see that strange environment.

Some of the best time was hanging out at the KOA preparing and eating good food at the picnic table. We were able to get a cabin for Kelly and Jason for their first night but we set up our tent for the next 2 nights. Jason’s first camping experience, probably the softest and easiest camping in the world.. an 8-person tent with 2 twin size Coleman air mattresses assembled into a king sized bed on the soft level grass of a KOA campsite. 

We don’t stay in KOAs very often. We think they are expensive and from our previous experience we found their sites small. They tend to be very well maintained. This was one of the best places we’ve stayed. They have lots of mature trees with good shade. When we needed them to trim some branches for us they sent a cherry picker over and trimmed the trees right away. It is a huge RV park with a lot of staff working the grounds and taking care of things. Definitely not cheap but the location and for what we needed it was ideal. I’m not sure why I think I need to review RV parks. Maybe it’s for the benefit of our fellow RVers who might visit some of the places we’ve been.

After Kelly and Jason left, we moved up to Ogden for a couple of days to get our laundry done and begin getting things ready for our upcoming mountain trip. We found a smaller tent and picked up some lighter air mattresses at a camping outlet store. Then we came to Idaho and have spent the last couple of weeks in the Snake River Plain and I’ve talked about that. We took a day to check out Craters of the Moon National Monument. On our way there we drove by the Atomic Museum at the site of EBR-1 (Experimental Breeder Reactor-1).

Modern communications technology - 1951

It was here 12/5/1951 scientists first generated electricity using atomic energy. They hooked up some light bulbs and were thrilled when they started the reaction and the lights came on. Out here in the middle of nowhere who would have thought we would find such a landmark. But where else would they put a nuclear reactor besides the middle of nowhere. It was really interesting and a nice young intern gave us a guided tour and told the stories of the famous scientists who worked there. It is at Idaho National Laboratory which is part of the U.S. Dept of Energy’s national laboratories that include Argonne back in Illinois.  Who knew?

The Middle of Nowhere

Craters of the Moon National Monument is where the astronauts who went to the moon came to practice their moon landing.

Flowers getting a foothold after the volcano

Volcanos erupted only about 10,000 years ago and the landscape is shaped by the craters and lava flows. Some flowers and plant life are starting to make inroads on the landscape but it still looks like a recent volcanic eruption. 

After we came up to the Idaho Falls area, we took a drive over Teton Pass and had lunch in Jackson, WY. Not far from where we are staying you can begin to see the Tetons in the distance. They don’t look a lot different from this side than they do from the other side.

The Tetons from the back....

While we were in Jackson, we went to check out the Elk Refuge Inn where we stayed back in 1982. It’s still there and hasn’t changed much.  We came out west with some friends with our very small children. When I hear tragic stories about children getting away from their parents I remember keeping an eye on my 3-year-old overlooking canyons at Yellowstone Park. We are all just a second away from being the next Gorilla Pit Mom or Alligator Dad and becoming an internet sensation engendering criticism for our failure as parents. I guess if we can blame the parents we can believe that something like that couldn’t happen to us. Those of us who manage to get our children to adulthood are just lucky.

There isn’t much to say about Orlando that hasn’t been said. Both Don and I have thought about something to write about human nature and about gun laws but so far haven’t written it. Our thoughts are not a whole lot different than what has been expressed by so many others. Would it make a difference if we added our voices sharing our grief and frustration?

First selfie with Grandma-- my family members
will recognize our mother's mouth in this grandma.

There is much in our family to be joyful about. Niece Aleatha with the help of her Doula Mom and team gave birth to a beautiful healthy baby girl on June 4 shortly after her mother had given up and figured she would be eternally pregnant even though that has never happened in the history of the human race. They named her Marjorie Helen after her maternal grandmothers.  Another DOM

(Daughter of Marjorie). Uncle Don had a large supply of hot water if needed even though we are in Idaho. My baby sister is a grandmother!

We are now assembling our packs and getting ready for Mystic Lake. We will be leaving here on Monday to head up toward Yellowstone. We are meeting with Don’s cousin in West Yellowstone for a couple of days and then on to Columbus, Montana where we will await the arrival of “the kids” and Ludwig. This trip is taking just about as much time to get together as it took Aleatha to make a baby…. Just saying.