Mountain Home ID to Ogden UT

Today we drove from Mountain Home, Idaho to Ogden, Utah crossing the flat plains of lower Idaho in the reverse direction of our earlier summer travels.  As we climbed the on-ramp early in the day, we saw onions again on the side of the road again and several onion trucks passed us going down the road in the same direction as we were traveling.  Like California, the production and transport of food is impressive to me and makes the reality of what it takes to get that onion onto a grocery shelf a much broader concept.

It was a relatively benign travel day until just before we reached our stop for the night.  A huge plume of black and white smoke with visible flames beneath the smoke could be seen rising just off the Interstate Highway a bit north of Ogden.  We have no idea what caused it or what was being done to fight the fire.  It did not appear on any news we watched.  After a summer of wildfires, it is sobering to see anything like this with everything so dry.

On these travel days it is hard to catch our routine naps.  Some days they get delayed to late in the day.  Snoopy accommodates naps whenever they occur however.  He travels mostly under the couch going down the road.  But overall, he’s been a trooper for this long summer of work.  We are all looking forward now to getting back to Florida and out of the RV for a while.

   

Pendleton OR to Mountain Home ID

Today we left Pendleton shortly after dawn.  It was beautiful with the sun creeping over the hills south of the Casino’s RV Park and making shadow lines in the fields recently harvested.  To the north, there was a haze and we wondered if smoke from wildfires to the west had found its way to this valley?

The road climbed in a serpentine fashion quickly into the hills with the terrain changing from golden fields to fir trees as the elevation increased.  Surprisingly, cows grazed in grassy open areas around some of the trees.  Soon we were at 3,200 feet and the road leveled out and started to run straight south gradually turning back into rolling hills covered in golden grass and sagebrush.

Near Huntington, Idaho, large swaths of burnt landscape claimed the hills.  In some cases the burnt areas covered hills as far to the west as we could see from the RV.  It was sobering to imagine what I-84 must have been like when these hills burned.  Seeing the news reports on television is one thing.  Experiencing the sight of what remains following those wildfires is hard to fathom when you see that all that is left is charred dirt.  This is somewhat of a remote area so no homes or businesses appeared to be affected.  Only 10% of these fires start from lightning.  Humans cause the remaining incidences.  One can only hope the worse of it is over as cooler temperatures are predicted in a couple of days from now.

The Salmon River sparkling in the sunlight greeted us as we crossed into Idaho around noon.  Along the road wild Black-Eyed Susan flowers bloomed in abundance.  We settled into Mountain Home RV Resort around 1:15 pm.  We walked here tonight and admired a rose garden in this park, watched a golden sunset glow beyond the trees and listened to the sounds of a nearby high school football game.  The universe is unwinding for the day just as it should in Mountain Home, Idaho. 

We’ll pause here for one night and then continue on to a new adventure in Utah.  There we will add a new state sticker to our U.S. map for RVing.  Life is good.  Chocolate cupcakes for dessert-join us anyone?