peaceful in nevada 8-31-07

Wow, the last day of August already! This month has flown by for us! September will be gone in a blink too. Tomorrow is Andrea’s birthday and Monday the third is our 30th wedding anniversary. We have actually been together 33 years…and they said we were too young…bah!

For our anniversary we thought about doing all different kinds of things, maybe taking a cruise, maybe going to Australia or South America, but it isn’t like we haven’t been traveling or spending quality time with each other…smile. So we decided to go to one of our favorite places with our favorite people…we are taking both our girls and their families with us to Disneyland. We leave on the 16th of September and then the 17th, 18th, and 19th are play in Disneyland days. It’ll be a blast and the boys are old enough to enjoy too!

Today we watched the sun shine its way across the hills and when it got to our trailer we decided to get out of bed…tee hee.

We took a walk up the hill right behind us and these pictures show the campground. The arrow is pointing to our rig and the next picture shows the aspens where the campground is nestled into the hills. The river is down by the highway and we had to cross it to get in the campground. We are enjoying the peace and quiet and listening to the wind blow in the aspens, smelling the sage…wish you were here!

The first picture is my view while I am at the computer.

Wild Horse CG, Nevada 8-30-07

Today we walked and JOGGED, my first time in about 2 months, since I hurt myself. No pain at all, we walked about 3 miles and I jogged a half mile of it. It was already getting warm. After we got back we decided we would head on down the road. We could have stayed another night but it was going to be hot and they were going to be mowing in anticipation of the big weekend. Most all the sites were reserved up and when we left this morning only one site was still occupied. They have around 80 – 100 sites, so crazy weekend.

We packed up, dumped the tanks and hit the road around 11:30. These pictures of southwest Idaho show the boring terrain, I tried to make this one picture interesting of the road off into sagebrush infinity. We were on 51 in Idaho and it became 225 in Nevada.

Now I must say how beautiful this part of Nevada is, lots of interesting rock formations, the Owyhee River runs along the highway and is clear and fast, the sage smells wonderful and there are lots of stands Quaking Aspen and junipers scattered around. This highway has very little activity on it and there are NO train tracks.

Our destination was the Wild Horse Crossing National Forest Service campground in the National Forest. We parked and walked around looking for the best site, we had parked in our favorite, there is only one other site taken up besides the host site and we are far away from them. We drove on down the road to check out another campground but we weren’t impressed and came back to Wild Horse Crossing. We are on highway 225 north of Elko, NV., just north of Wild Horse Lake.

We checked to be sure that we would get satellite before getting set up and after Larry moved the dish three times he got it. We are tucked back in a corner with some elevation over the rest of the campground and it is extremely peaceful here. There has been a helicopter fly over a couple times but we can live with that.

Now that evening is descending I only hear one car every half hour or so. Big clouds moved in and we have already had some bursts of wind and thunder and this could carry on into the night. We are fine with that because it has cooled it off and with no hook-ups at all that means no a/c. We want to stay here until Sunday or Monday, but that will depend on how long we can make our water last. There is NO water in this campground.

We are now back in the Pacific Time zone and we have no phone service, so email is our only contact for the next few days or so.

This disgustingly weird looking grasshopper Darth Vader looking bug is huge! About an inch and three quarters long and hops and appears to suck the juice out of other dead bugs, even their own kind…gross. I give them a wide berth!

Bruneau Dunes SP, Idaho 8-29-07

The last few days were pretty much the same. Larry would get up before 7, head out to Helibase, and come back for a few hours to take care of stuff here at home and then head back out until 8 or later. I just did my usual, which to most of you would be extremely boring, so I’ll not bore you with the details.

We didn’t have smoke at the RV Park until yesterday. I will say that McCall is OVERLY impressed with itself. Very expensive and unless you have a boat on the lake, the town doesn’t have much to offer except a lot of inflated prices, from lodging to fuel. The Super 8 was $144+ tax and our site at the RV Resort was $50 a night and was the only game in town. They picked up our garbage (big whoop), and they had a pool and a big lodge, but big deal. They didn’t have tables at each site which for that price I would think they would have! We had checked out the State Park, but the sites were really tight. We did have a good dinner last night at a Mexican restaurant in town, but it was the first time that we paid $8 for one enchilada, rice and beans…amazing.

Yesterday we did laundry, went to the store and the post office and tidied up….ah, I think we fit a nap into our day too…tee hee.

Today we headed out a bit before 10, south on 55. It was so smoky I didn’t bother taking pictures, plus I had taken enough when we had headed north a couple weeks ago. That Payette River is something, there are huge, long stretches of heavy rapids where it just looks like the inside of a washing machine at high agitation, then it smoothes and widens out looking placid and then whammo, rapids again. I’m sure there are some fools out there that have tried to raft or kayak it…fools I say.

So we hit 84 east from Boise and before we hit Mountain Home we had stopped at a Rest Area for a bathroom break and snacks. We came out of the trailer and Larry said, “Isn’t Arizona pretty”. And sure enough he was right, it did look like we could have been in Arizona, or Nevada or New Mexico or Texas or South Eastern Colorado or North-eastern Calif., or Eastern Oregon, or Eastern Washington…I may have left out a few! Amazing, but true!

We fueled up in Mountain Home and then headed south on 51 and we are currently at Bruneau Dunes State Park. There is a big sand dune here and they claim it is the tallest one in the States. We find it hard to believe, there is one in Nevada that looked bigger. Larry offered to hold the bottom of the tape measure if I wanted to take the other end to the top…not. I told him to just hike his little GPS…GPs to the top and measure it himself…he declined.

We got here around 2:30 and we traveled 181 miles today. We have power and water here and with tax our site cost us $21.20. Idaho taxes everything!!!! Idaho is a nice place to visit, but I don’t think it is at the top of my list. It does have the prettiest rivers.

Heading for McCall, Idaho 8-24-07

I forgot to mention that we were on the road 3 hours yesterday, but about an hour of that was driving up to closed campgrounds and heading back the way we came to Lake Alva. We traveled 114 miles. Oh, and I looked up on the internet for western Montana trees and besides the Lodge Pole Pine I’m familiar with and the Firs there are Mountain and Western Hemlock, Pacific Yew, Spruce, and Larch also known as Tamarack. The Larch (Tamarack) is a conifer with small cones, but its needles turn golden in the fall and it sheds its needles. Our friends Don and Tracy had told us how beautiful it is up there in the fall and how pretty the Tamaracks make the forest in the fall. Autumn is my favorite season, so one of these falls we’ll have to be in Montana to see it!

Today we got going early; we were on the road by 7:40. After the decision to go to McCall yesterday we debated about packing up and getting on the road, but we had already paid and settled in for the evening and having never traveled that route we were a little concerned about where to spend the night…as we discovered, it wouldn’t have been a problem most of highway 12 was in National Forest and there were tons of places to stay…oh well.

We had to turn the heater on this morning; it was 39 degrees and not a whole lot warmer in the trailer. We headed south on 83 and there was a lot of smoke lying in with the lake fog. The air temps were cold enough that the water in the lakes were creating steamy fog and there were a few lakes to get by.

We hit highway 200 west through Missoula, which we found we liked and it had a good feel to it, we’ll have to check it out more another time. I found that lovely wildflower at the place we stopped for toast.

Several miles after entering Idaho we spent the rest of the trip alongside huge, gorgeous rivers. The Lochsa, which joined up with the Selway and then we were along the Clearwater for a short time while we were traveling south on 13 and then we were along the big Salmon River going south on highway 55, at Riggins the Salmon hooked off east and we were then along the Payette. I’m telling you there are so many rivers here in Idaho they are hard to keep track of!

It was a long travel day, 8 hours, when we have lately only been doing 3 or 4 and we traveled 329 miles getting in to the McCall RV Resort at 4:15. Took us a bit to get an acceptable site, they first tried to put us on a quad but all of those rigs nearby were part of a big wedding group, so Larry and the “parker” tooled off in the golfcart and looked at a couple of alternatives and the one Larry chose is perfect. We are backed up to a hill, the sites are large and we are across the lane from a quad of Prevosts, gorgeous million dollar rigs, we are “hobnobbing”.

Larry got us set up and the satellite dialed in and then took off to find the Helibase. It is about 5 miles from here. We think we will be here until Wednesday. I doubt I’ll have much to ramble about while we are here, but who knows?

Alva Lake, Montana 8-23-07

Today was cloudy, which made us double glad we saw Glacier Park yesterday. We got up and did laundry and I cleaned the bathroom because we were thinking we would be dry camping for a few days.

From our place in Kalispell we headed south on highway 83. It is beautiful forest in the Rocky Mountains and the Mission Range was on the west and had some really tall peaks with snow on them. I didn’t take any pictures because they would have been all smoky. The highway had been closed for a week and a half up until just a couple days ago due to a big fire in the area. We cruised through one campground but with the trees being so thick Larry didn’t think we would get satellite so we went on down towards Seely Lake but all the campgrounds were still closed (could they put the signs out by the road, no, so you had to drive 7 miles down a road before you came upon the entrance, gated with the closed sign). So we had some lunch by the side of the road and talked about our options, we weren’t really ready to head out of the forest yet so we turned around and headed back up to Alva lake campground.

At Alva Lake we found a nice wide site, got backed in, blocked up and I had the slides out when Larry came back from walking around and said that one of the other sites had better sun for charging our batteries so we unblocked, pulled in and drove around the loop to the new site (thank goodness no one was around for this spectacle). We’ve gotten to where it is easier for me to get behind the wheel to shimmy the rig back and forth so it’s where Larry wants it versus me just standing like an idiot telling him what to do and it is never where he wants it. I take direction really good, but sometimes when Larry is at the back and I’m watching in the mirror my brain keeps wanting to reverse the direction he’s giving me, most times entertaining and I can get past it…sometimes not and then I just turn the whole operation to Lar and he’s on his own (which he really has no problem with).

We spent the rest of the afternoon just enjoying the peace and quiet. The forests here in Montana are so diverse! When we were way over on the western border of Montana we were in a cedar forest and here there are no cedars, but a lot of trees I don’t know. The next time we come to Montana I will have a tree identifier book.

Larry thought he might be able to get the satellite, but our sun was waning and he didn’t want to use our power up while he was trying to find the satellite (the modems and stuff have to be on) so he took the day off from satellite hunting. We had cell service and Larry got a phone call from Darel, his friend at the fire and our plans changed a bit again. We will be heading to McCall, Idaho tomorrow to take care of the Heli-com trailer he has there so the guy that is currently with it can go home. This lifestyle’s flexibility is fun!

We watched the sun set for awhile behind the mountains and lake, but then the clouds and wind blew in and we headed home. It got cold fast.

Aren’t these teeny blue flowers the cutest? And this bird is new to us. Large like a pigeon but more graceful and there was a pair of them. We were warned about bears, but we never saw one, no grizzly, no wolf and no moose! Sheesh!

Lots of Glacier National Park 8-22-07

Today we woke up to mostly clear skies, could see fog up in the park, but over the next hour it started burning off so we decided to drive through Glacier National Park. With all the fires and smoke we weren’t sure we would even go through there, no sense if you can’t see much especially when it is all about the scenery. We packed a picnic and headed off.

It was a gorgeous day, mostly clear, a teeny bit of haze and warm if you stayed in the sun. We were very glad we went, the views were stunning, the water clear and the air so fresh. Somewhere before the park we crossed a river and a large Bald Eagle flew across the bridge and on up the river. It happened so fast, no picture of course. They are working on part of the road through the park so there was a delay, but when you see that road you are VERY glad that they are working on it, some very scary drops. Our only complaint was they didn’t have enough bathroom stops. Other parks at least will put in a couple porta-potties during peak periods. There were so many people in the park that the parking lot at the visitor center in the middle of the park was full, so if you had to use the facilities you were out of luck. We didn’t find another bathroom until we were almost out the other side.

On our way home we stopped at the fire camp south of the park where Larry met up with one of his old customers, he visited for a couple hours while I read a book. Larry may end up working for him some next year. His friend has two communication center trailers that he provides to the helibases at fire camps. Larry outfitted the first one with all the radios and wired it etc. Darel, his friend, mentioned his other trailer was in McCall, ID and we thought it was funny because we had recently been through there. The last picture is of a helicopter lowering his bucket and coming in for a landing.

We stopped in West Glacier to get something to eat. On our way through we just missed seeing a Harley Biker hit a deer, he had leg injuries and you could see the skid marks going all across the road, his bike was a mess, but fortunately he mustn’t of been going very fast which probably saved him and his buddies too. Every time I see something like that I want to smack every bike rider I know over the head and say “What Is Wrong With You!” You all know who you are! We know those details because Larry was listening to his scanner.

All these pictures were taken in the park. The glaciers that have been there for millions of years are small and just look like dirty patches of snow. There was a light dusting of snow on some of the peaks, it is a stunning place and we had a great day.

Stunning day in Glacier National Park 8-22-07

These are just the teasers. I took 235 pictures today at Glacier National Park. We got back late and it will take me awhile to go through all the pictures and my brain is tired so I am lacking in the witty repartee you all love. Details tomorrow as long as we get satellite.

We are moving tomorrow, so who knows what tomorrow brings...sounds like a song!