The Snake

Sunday (Oct 13)

Cloudy with a threat of rain. I wonder if it’s snowing where I’ll be later this week [answer: no! It cleared up and I had excellent weather for my high country days!!]. Our last installment ended with a Plague of Flies that came out of nowhere at my last campground. I got rid of many of them that night, but there’s still plenty more – probably a hundred, starting to get active and annoying as the day warms up. I’m sure I was very entertaining to my campground neighbors, opening all my doors and flapping a towel like a madman.

This is funny country – brown, dry, boring plains and potato fields for as far as the eye can see, but then the eye can’t see the Snake River Canyon or the tributary canyons, because, duh, they are below eye level. and the canyon is often quite spectacular. The 40 minute drive to Twin Falls on US 30 goes left, right, left, right, left, a numbing succession of right angle turns as the federal highway follows the boundaries of potato fields, but every now and then you’ll glimpse a yawning chasm off to the left, where the Snake has chewed a steep canyon into the vast lava fields of southern Idaho.

Yelp did me a solid by telling me about Java, a coffee/wifi/breakfast sandwich place that was quite perfect for my needs today. Even though I am having a very good road-trip time, I don’t feel very good. Maybe it’s just my odd sleeping patterns so far, but here I am in the normally joyful process of planning where to go next and I can’t get excited about it.

I made good choices though. Drive to the east edge of town then down the into the pretty deep Snake River Canyon to the Shoshone Falls overlook. It’s actually quite a deluxe park, brought to you by Idaho Power. I think fondly of Idaho Power because of their excellent campground at Oxbow – oddly enough on the Oregon side of the Snake, about 280 miles downriver from here! This park has nice facilities, many excellent overlooks of the falls, but the falls themselves were pretty limp this time of year. All the water is going to agriculture for the watering season the signs say.

At the Java I had left my window open a bit hoping that flies would fly out, but that did not happen. I seem to be back into the triple digit fly count again. My theory is not that more flew in, rather that there were uncounted hordes who spent the night in odd corners of the van and who got active as it warmed up. I do my open all doors and flap around thing again here at the overlook and get a bunch of them out. If a narrative needs a little adversity for interest, this seems to be my adversity for this trip, #stupidhipsterproblems :)

After the park I take the long way to my home for the night, eschewing the interstate for US 30 for another 25 miles of potato fields, until it eventually angles into I-84. I am blessed this Sunday afternoon to  good reception on an FM station which is broadcasting the Niners game – a victory as it turns out! I-84 branches into I-86 heading to Pocatello. My goal is Massacre Rocks State Park. As I near the destination, the threatening clouds turn into steady rain.

I get off at Massacre Rocks, and it is gloomy and uninviting and expensive – $28.60 just to park my van in the driving rain. I am blessed again that I happen to get very good phone reception here, so I can bring up AllStays (my camping app), to find that there is a free BLM campground a few miles further on. I actually have good enough bars to bring up a detailed map of how to get to this obscure little BLM spot, Pipeline Campground, tucked away at a boat ramp on the Snake, which is a reservoir not a river at this point.

It’s deserted, has a level parking spot, the gloominess fits my mood — all in all could not be more perfect for my needs tonight!

It’s raining, and cold enough that all my flies are asleep. I fix myself some tea and listen to the rain. I enjoy the solitude and lack of flies and count my blessings.

Monday

Not raining this morning, but you can tell the sky is still thinking about it! In the daylight I can see that the reservoir is quite low. The boat ramp is unusable until the river/lake level rises a few feet. I’m looking forward to the delights of Pocatello so hump my way back up the steep muddy gravel road that dropped me down here to get back to the access road to I-86. My good phone bars give me the confidence to follow side roads for another few miles to avoid the interstate.

Pocatello is a mere 30 miles away. I dine at a greasy spoon (Elmer’s) right across the street from the campus. It seemed like the most promising of the four places that Yelp listed for “coffee shop with wifi”. I’m disappointed to say that the Denny’s vibe was much stronger than the college vibe, even though I’m looking at the leafy, green campus right across the street.

I explore Pocatello a tiny bit, wondering if I should’ve made plans to spend a day here. I reconnect with US 30, which is also I-15 around here, and head south. US 30 is the same road I’ve been following since I got to Idaho three days ago! This part is super scenic, tall, steep hills close by on my right (west), and pretty big mountains wreathed in clouds far to the east.

US 30 leaves I-15 to wind through a canyon heading for Utah and before you know it, here is Lava Hot Springs!

LHS is a really funky little town in the offseason. Multiple hot springs resorts, a huge swimming resort closed for the season, and almost nothing going on here in mid-October. The campground I planned to stay at was right on the river and very pretty, but nobody in the office. Across the street was a hotel with soaking pools – the Lava Hot Springs Inn. I thought that was the main place, but I explored a little and found that I was wrong. The main place was up the road a little bit. Some phone negotiation got me a camping spot at the motel/RV park right across the street for $20 instead of $30.

I went for that and had a pretty sweet afternoon and evening. Eat half my sando; soak for couple of hours; back to eat the other half of my sando; take a lovely walk around the little town; then wrap up my excellent day by ending up back at the pools for a second nice long soak. Also, my little campground was very pretty with the cottonwoods along the creek in their peak fall color!

Tuesday

I hang out on the van in the morning as I so often do – maybe longer than usual since I can browse on my phone – I have bars here in the middle of town! I do finally get going and walk around  a bit. I dawdled too long to make breakfast at the only place in town that serves it, so I guess I’ll have breakfast in at the place with wifi in Montpelier. I drive around the town and stop at a pretty little park. Turns out there’s a maze of paths in the decorative garden at the top of the canyon where the pools are. Wish I’d known about it last night; it’s just a short walk from where I slept last night. I wasn’t able to record it, because I did that thing where I don’t grab my camera or phone because I’m just getting out for a second, then I walk over to the edge, then I walk a little farther, then before you know it I’m on an interesting walk with interesting picture possibilities, but I’m worried because I didn’t lock the van and… I didn’t bring my camera – happens all the time, sigh…

Anyway … I finally hop back on US 30 over the pass, following the Oregon Trail into the wide valley of Soda Springs. This funky little town is centered around a geyser on a timer.  It blows every hour on the hour! Wish I’d read that “on the hour” part more closely, because I missed it by about seven minutes, could have easily made it – sigh… I also came to wish I got breakfast here, because the place where I ended up eating was terrible. I’ll take another swing at Soda Springs some day I hope … This southeast corner of Idaho is pretty and interesting and I’ll probably work my way back here.

On to Montpelier and my date with a truly depressing breakfast. It’s a truck stop about six miles north of town, so I stopped rather than taking my chances in town. It sounded ok on Yelp, but the waitress, the food, the other customers, the decor, everything about it was profoundly, depressingly indifferent, with the life sucked out of everything. The wifi was terrible at my table, but was pretty good fifteen feet away in the sitting area between the restaurant and the trucker’s store. So I after finishing my meal I spent another twenty minutes sitting on a bench doing my camping research == all around FAIL.

I get food for the next few days at the depressing grocery store in town. The weather today is cold and gloomy and depressing, which maybe is why I think everything sucks today. I am so unenthused that I actually hang out in the parking lot and call a couple of motels. The cheapest was $70, so that made my decision to go ahead and camp at Bear Lake pretty easy.

I took US 89 west out of town, headin’ to Mormon country. Paris, ID is worth a few minutes if you ever pass this way. There’s quite an interesting tabernacle, and it seems to have inspired lots of interesting other buildings also. The town seems aggressively boring and straightlaced – the Mormon thing, but the buildings are interesting.

This is the third time I’ve been through here, and I’ve always felt too rushed to go to Bear Lake Wildlife Refuge, os today I decide to take the five miles of gravel road and cut over there. Government shutdown – duh. So … gravel road back to 89, head on south to North Beach Road to try to find the Idaho state park on the far side of the lake. It was quite an interesting adventure!

Across the north end of the lake – solid water to the right, the marshes of the wildlife refuge on the left. 3/4 the way across the top of the lake starts Bear Lake State Park, four or five miles of utterly deserted beaches. Then is North Beach Rentals, also closed for the season. Then is Bear Lake Hot Springs, which I got pretty excited by, but which was also closed :(((  The camping area here looks beautiful, grass and cottonwood trees – I will return here. Then was quite a long drive down the east side of the lake, past a bunch of gated communities of vacation homes. Finally, right before the Utah state line was my campground. When I got there there was exactly one other camper, I got my pick of the awesome lakeside sites, well worth the endless driving around!

Almost full moon tonight. It’s clear and windless and really cold, and just beautiful to walk around the edge of the lake. And no one else is here!

At the the of my walk, with the sun long gone and the moon coming up over the hills, I hung around outside the van for as long as I could stand it in the 25° cold because it was just so darned beautiful. Not too long after I went “inside” – took off my shoes and turned on the heat!  – three pickup trucks full of dudes arrived on the scene.They talked loudly, slammed doors, had lots of bright lanterns and a big bonfire, and yakked late into the night.

I am torn between being annoyed that they disrupted my solitude and being grateful that they didn’t come till I was in the van for the night anyway.

Wednesday

There were even more sites full of big pickup trucks this morning. Most turn out to be part of a large  group of parasailers. A motorboat appeared from I assume, across the lake to drag a parasailer fast enough to gain altitude and cruise around above the lake for a few minutes. Looks like a lot of fun … for them. They seem like happy nerds and I forgive them for trampling my solitude last night :-;

However, the other large group of truckers has an extremely loud trail bike that they are racing around the beach right in front of my. I am wishing a horrible life on those folks.

I return up the east side of Bear Lake. I do not retrace my route across the top of the lake, rather I continue straight north along the eastern edge of the wildlife refuge, basically all the way back to Montpelier. Not much going on in the NWR, but it’s a very pretty drive, marshes on the left, golden hills on the right.

There is a regional fast food place in this part of the world called the Arctic. I grabbed a burger at the Montpelier Arctic the first time I passed through here, and I remember it and its wifi fondly. It was again a very pleasant and refreshing interlude, where I planned the rest of today. First part of the plan, refill my propane tank so I don’t freeze my ass off tonight. The propane places listed by Yelp were not happening, so I stopped at the KOA on the way to Wyoming and got filled up.

Then the long drive up the beautiful Star Valley. It’s very pretty, but has surprisingly few services. I have driven this three times, and have yet to find any welcome place to stop in the whole danged valley!

At Alpine WY, instead of heading east to Jackson as usual, I turn west, following the edge of the Palisades Reservoir. It’s quite big, I drive along it for over 15 miles. Then the massive earthen dam and the waterway becomes the good ole Snake River again. The ole Snake sure gets around up in these parts. I continue along the wide, green, and extremely scenic Snake River Valley to my destination, Heise Hot Springs.

Heise didn’t look quite right on the internet, and that turned out to be an accurate reading. Strange place – they seem to have charged me $21 to park in their yard. You go into the restaurant where the cute waitress takes your money and gives you the code to that gate, and that’s all you get! No bathroom, no nuttin’, just a parking place. Places where you’re supposed to park on the grass confuse me. But that’s what I did. It’s a pleasant enough spot, next to this dried up creek bed and 150 yards from the hot springs one way and 200 yards to the restaurant, but it’s just weird. I never saw another living person in the campground, and it is just wrong to charge $21 and not have a bathroom.

The hot springs is a completely separate business from the campground! Each pleads absolute ignorance to even the simplest question about the other. The pools are a better deal, it turns out. The stupid campground was still charging top summer dollar for … nothing, but the pools had off-season pricing and even a senior discount. It was $7 for me, but annoyingly and additional $1 to leave and re-enter. After the excellent example of Lava Hot Springs, which gave top-notch service in every way, this place is disappointing in many ways. To be fair, the actual soaking experience was pretty good. The single soaking pool is a long concrete tub with a pvc pipe running along the long edge, pierced every couple of feet to shoot out a jet of very hot, slightly sulphur-y water. About 105° she says… The big pool was 101-ish, so there was a nice contrast. The showers and bathroom arrangement sucked big time.

It was a very cold night again, good thing I refilled my propane! We’re about a day away from full moon, so my little lawn area was very pretty all night.

Thursday

I left my strange campsite at the checkout time of noon and made my leisurely way into Idaho Falls. I quite enjoyed Idaho Falls the other time I was here, and it was even more magical this time! The coolest thing in town is the elaborately engineered Falls area. As proof that I am fated to love Idaho Falls, the Number One restaurant when Yelping “breakfast wifi” was 100 yards from where I wanted to be! So I spend over an hour at the restaurant, researching the trip and reading about the shutdown being OVER, then a couple of more hours wandering around the waterfalls and pools and fountains and bridges and hidden pathways of the area. For next time, there is also a Walmart 1/4 mile away, so I could park and walk to everything I was doing here.

I get groceries, and a little before 5PM I’m headed out of town for a rather crazed eighty-odd mile drive to the edge of the world, i.e. Craters of the Moon. By the time I got to the park I was so amped by the 70 mph driving that I zoomed right past the campground. There is absolutely nothing up here, so I drove about 15 extra miles before I figured my mistake. The miles weren’t too bad, but it cost me most of my last half hour of daylight, which was annoying.

Friday

I hit the Visitors Center first thing, being extremely thankful for the simple blessing of it being open for business, since the Government Shutdown is over!! Then I tour Craters for an hour or so.  Breakfast in odd little town of Arco.

Then drive 80 miles of cattle country up the long valley to my hot springs. These mountains are very reminiscent of Nevada, and the guidebook says they are indeed part of the Basin and Range region. Midway up the valley is the lovely Mackay Reservoir with a BLM campground in the middle that could bear staying at some day.