benja22

July 17, 2008 8:30 AM MDT

Greetings from Laramie, Wyoming

This is my first entry from away from home. I’m like Jack Kerouac! Or not.

Patty and I are on our way to the small mining town of Atlanta, Idaho for Michelle and Ian’s wedding.

We were going to leave Lindsborg, Kansas early Thursday morning but because I had slept a good part of the day away and Patty was home from work early, we decided to take off at 5:00 Wednesday afternoon. We were surprised to make it to Laramie in eight 1/2 hours. Now we have some time to kill.

I’m sure Laramie is beautiful. My first view of it as I stepped out of the Days Inn was of a dilapidated trailer court. As I walked around to the front of the hotel I could see the mountains that we will be travelling into. Mountains look much better when you are actually in them.

Patty and I woke up earlier than we set the alarm for and are ready for the day. We plan to travel to Ogden, Utah and then follow the Great Salt Lake northward into Idaho. We will try to take some pictures which we will post. I will add to this ‘live’ blog the next time I have internet access.

July 17, 2008 1010 PM 2008

Greetings from Twin Falls, Idaho

It was a great day for travelling. Sunny, not much wind or traffic.

Western Wyoming is beautiful to drive through. Sadly, along I-80 there are very few scenic lookouts or signs pointing to anything of interest. Utah is even worse. In Utah we did not see a single sign pointing to The Great Salt Lake. We saw one sign which said “point of interest next right”. Since that was all the information and we didn’t want to veer off course see the shack that the 5 time quilting bee winner lived in or some other bummer, we continued on. Utah doesn’t seem to understand what it has or how to sell it. A tourist travelling the major highways through the state will pass by the gold mine that many spots in Utah could be.

Idaho, on the other hand, proudly points travellers to points of interests. After several hours through Wyoming and Utah it was refreshing to see signs pointing to sites such as the Snake River Canyon,

Snake River Canyon

an impressive site that when seen in person, convinces you that Evel Knievel was truly insane. A few miles more and we were pointed to Shoshone Falls. A miniature Niagara Falls in Idaho. I’ll post pictures of those sites in Idaho when I have enough battery power left in my camera to download them. I also have some pictures of orange highway construction barrels from the drive through Utah. I doubt I’ll post them.

After a stay in a Comfort Inn (Better than the Days Inn in Laramie in every way except toilet paper quality) here in Idaho Falls tonight we begin the treacherous climb into the rugged mountain roads to Atlanta Idaho for Michelle and Ian’s wedding. We’ll be camping in that area for two days. It’s a remote (pack your water and food in from 75 miles away) area. Sounds like fun. Afterwards, we will be going back down a different mountain road to Boise to hook up a U-Haul to bring Kelly back to Kansas with us. I’ll be posting again as soon as I have wi-fi access again. Probably from Boise.

Shoshone Falls

Friday, July 18, 2008

Greetings from Atlanta, Idaho

(from hand written journal)

We pulled out of Twin Falls on Friday morning and headed north into the mouantains. The highway was good through Gooding and we began to climb, then the road began to curve. After a pleasant, scenic climb into the mountains the road began to descend into a rocky valley. As we came around one final turn, the view opened onto a spectacular Anderson Resevoir. It was truly breathtaking. Sadly, our camera was out of commission at the time.

The nearby town of Pine, Idaho was our last chance to stock up on last minute supplies. After visiting with some of the locals, who were all very nice folks, we grabbed an extra cooler of ice, water, soda and beer. We found later in our trip that Fix-a-flat, tire plugs, and an air compressor would also have been nice things to have.

The road from Pine to Atlanta is called James Creek Road. Google maps lists the drive as 32.7 mi – about 2 hours 7 mins! It actually took us 3 hours and 30 minutes to make the 32.7 mile trip. This is not a road for a Chrysler Town & Country mini-van with 4 ply tires which is what we were driving.

Half way up this treacherous mountain road we were accompanied by the occasional dirt bike. As we climbed higher, even the dirt bikes disappeared. To our right was a steep drop over cliffs that were hundreds of feet down. To our left was the wall of the cliff that was hundreds of feet up. I kept the drivers side rear view mirror as close to that wall as I could as we went around the twisted ash covered and rocky one lane road.

We were rewarded near the top for our troubles with a water fall that was near enough to the road that we were able to get out and stand next to it. It was a beautiful site. Too bad our nerves were too shot by this time to truly enjoy it.

After reaching the top of the mountain we descended along the same road into the valley and at last reached the gold mining town of Atlanta, Idaho. A town with a population of about 50 people. In the winter the population dwindles down to 35 people.

A few short months ago, Atlanta, Idaho had a lodge, a general store, and a bar. The local gold mine has recently been purchased and all the public accommodations as well. The public could not make use of the store or the lodge or the bar. There was no cell phone service. We were in one of the most isolated spots I’ve ever been in inside the continental United States. It was beautiful.

We flagged down the first local we came across and were not surprised in a town of 50 people that he was able to direct us to where Ian and Luna-Michelle, whose wedding we traveled here to see, were staying. Five minutes later Patty was was hugging her daughter for the first time in over two years and meeting her grand-daughter, Sky, for the first time ever.
We were soon joined by Ian’s parents, Scot and Joyce Cambron, who have a cabin in town and were the most wonderful and hospitable people you could ever hope to meet. The kindness they showed, not only for Patty and I, but for everyone who made the trek up the mountain made us feel so welcome. They are truly special people.
We set up our tent and made our camp as homey as possible in the shadow of Graylock Mountain and near the cold, shallow and rocky Boise River. It wasn’t long before young people began showing up from everywhere.

Graylock Mountain

Some were ill-prepared for two nights camping in the mountains. Many bare footed, dirty and tired. A dip in the nearby hot springs soon refreshed many body and spirit. Ty, a young friend of our son Mike, hitchhiked from Portland for the wedding and arrived in bare feet. Oddly, he was wearing a suit (with no shoes) on the day of the wedding.

As the night went on we found ourselves happily sharing our food and beer and fire and extra blankets with many of these young people. They shared what they had as well.

Mike and Mark and Kelly arrived from Boise in Mike’s Ford Taurus with their friend Drew and Kat (Cat?) who spent the evening with us as well. Mike soon discovered he had a ruined tire and a small spare tire that was short on air. I made the discovery that I had a tire losing air on the van at about this same time. It would truly be an adventure limping back down the mountain for us all.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Atlanta, Idaho

I think even the locals were surprised at how cold it had become in the night. Patty and I slept in the van. One of us would wake every hour or so to start the engine and turn on the heater. The outside thermometer in the van showed the temperature to be 34 degrees. I felt somewhat guilty using the heater while knowing others nearby were huddled in tents and under blankets next to campfires.

We all survived the night and breakfasted on fruit and trail mix.

Patty and I explored the area and took a nice walk along a trail that parallelled the river. We dipped our feet in only briefly to confirm that it was indeed as cold as it looked. It was a lovely day in the mountains, if not too warm, compared to the night before.

The wedding, which is another post entirely, took place at 2:00 p.m. in a circle of friends with a mountain for the back drop. It was a magnificent outdoor wedding.

Afterwards we danced to a bluegrass band and ate and drank our fill. Hippies stood shooting the breeze with anaesthesiologists and Intel engineers eating gumbo and listening to music as a pack of amazing well behaved dogs played around them. It was a sight to see such camaraderie and good will in celebration of Ian and Luna-Michelle’s wedding day. It truly was a beautiful thing.

As night fell, knowing we had to break camp early, we staggered back to our campsite across the road.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Greetings from Lindsborg, Kansas

We woke and broke camp early Sunday morning. Mike’s tire was ruined. He would be leading us back to Boise on a donut spare tire. My tire was flat. It had a slow leak from a small split in the tire. It could not be repaired but could hold air for a while. I put the donut on and went in to town. Scot and Joyce fed us a nice breakfast and I enjoyed several cups of coffee. I hadn’t had coffee since Twin Falls and it was fantastic.

Scot and Joyce must have fed about 20 people. We hung around and visited for over an hour enjoying the company. After several attempts to find someone with an air compressor, we were taken to a local residents house and filled up my tire and Mike’s donut. I got back to Scot and Joyce’s cabin and quickly put my leaky tire on and it was time to go. I can’t thank the Cambrons and everyone else in Atlanta enough for their hospitality and kindness.

Google maps lists the route from Atlanta to Boise as 103 mi – about 3 hours 54 mins. That’s if you don’t miss the turn to Idaho City. We did. The route we took, as far as I can tell was 113 mi – about 4 hours 19 mins of much rougher road.

This road was not the treacherous one lane winding snowmobile trail we took up from Twin Falls. This was a slightly wider winding, climbing, dropping 113 miles of washboard hell. It was a true teeth jattering road.

Shortly after starting down the road our speedometer and tachometer stopped working. We were going slow in low gears anyway so it didn’t matter that much at the time. To say we were following Mike down the mountain really meant that we were within a half hour of them. It was impossible to stay within site of each other as we each crept down the road.

After an eternity we came to a wide spot in the road where there was a small bar/store and a dumpster. We pulled over and dumped the trash we had packed away from camp. That is when Patty heard the air coming out of the front tire. So now we have two tires losing air and one losing air too fast to make it down the mountain.

The store had fix-a-flat and we bought two cans at $8.00 a piece. I put a can in the tire and we took off as fast as we could. The washboard road be damned. Twenty minutes later we caught up with Mike and the others. They had pulled up at a beautiful spot along the river and were working their way down to the beach. I rolled down my window and told them I couldn’t stop because I was losing air. No longer able to be of any help to them due to our own predicament, we proceeded down the road wishing them luck.

Two hours later we pulled into Boise and found the house that Mark, Mike, and Kelly were renting. The U-Haul place was due to close in ninety minutes but Patty could not stand another minute without a shower now that one was available. She luxuriated in the shower for a full ten minutes. By this time Mike, Mark, Drew and Kat arrived safely at the house. Patty and I left them to move Kelly’s belongings out to the street while we went blindly into Boise to find a place to fix a tire and to get the U-Haul. We found the U-Haul place and they sent us to another U-Haul place in the city. We were pretty happy about that, but we found it easily enough and were soon hooked up and moving.

Not yet comfortable with either Boise traffic or pulling a trailer, I gave up on finding a tire repair place and decided to pick up a plug kit and a 12 volt air compressor at an AutoZone store. We made it, after a few dead end tries, back to the house where the kids had a chicken dinner waiting for us. After a quick meal we went out into the 99 degree heat to load the trailer and plug the tire.

The plug held and we began our 37 hour dead run back to Lindsborg. We judged our speed by mile markers and stop watches. Since the cruise control worked this was only a problem in the infinite number of construction zones along the highways in July.

Ogallala, Nebraska is where the plug finally gave out. Only an hour lost.

We made it home at midnight and, too tired to sleep, hopped in the pool and swam till 3:00 a.m.

Some might consider this to have been a terrible trip.

I loved every minute of it.