Where we last left off, Melinda and Jevon were sleeping in the middle of nowhere in Oregon, which, it turns out, is mostly a desert.
We got up with the sun on Sunday morning and were ready to hit the road. On Sunday, we drove the rest of the way through Oregon, and most of the way through Idaho. Oregon and western Idaho mostly looked like this:
Lost of dusty hills and green-brown brush. By Sunday afternoon, we had made it to Boise, and we stopped for two hours or so to get lunch and walk around a bit. I really liked Boise and would love to go back and spend some more time there sometime. It was not unlike Urbana, in some ways; it felt like a college town in the middle of a pretty rural state, but it did feel a little bit bigger than Urbana, since the state capitol is there. Bigger than Urbana, but way small for a state capitol, that's for sure. Anyway, we checked out the Basque quarter a tiny bit (did you know that Boise has the biggest Basque population outside of the Pyrenees?), but I had forgotten that I wanted to eat at a Basque restaurant, and we had already stopped for lunch at a local brew pub by that point. I was disappointed, but the beer was pretty good, so it was fine. We walked around downtown a bit, found an Apple store and bought a car charger for the iPad, which was absolutely essential and totally worth the $35 or however much I paid for it, and then hit the road again.
On Sunday evening, around the time we were getting hungry and tired of being in the car, we came upon some signs for a state park in Idaho. So we decided to call it a day and set up camp for the night. The Idaho campground might have been my favorite one of the whole trip, actually. First, because it was beautiful (although they all were, really):
But second because the facilities were really nice - there were some pretty decent showers, even - and third because there was a frisbee golf course! So while we were checking in and paying our fees at the main office, we inquired about the frisbee golf course, and the people there were so nice that they lent us a whole set of discs to play with, as long as we promised to drop them off before we left the next day. The guy at the front desk was obviously really in to frisbee golf, so he was simultaneously excited and a little bit sheepish to tell us what all the different types of discs were for, and I think he probably would've stayed late to play with us if we'd asked him to.
Anyway, we set up camp and struck out to find the first hole on the golf course, but it took us forever to find it. The campsite was right along the Snake River, so we basically ended up doing a really nice little hike along the river before we finally found part of the course. Then we had to back track a bit to find the first hole. And then we weren't very good, so there was a lot of walking involved. And then I managed to lose my disc in some brush on the third hole, which involved a lot more walking. And then we finally found it after what felt like an hour of searching, by which time the sun was going down, and I was totally disheartened and ready to quit. So... it could have been really fun. ;)
But then there was a glorious, much needed shower awaiting me, and I got to get all clean and fresh and walk back to the tent in the beautiful, cooled-down summer twilight, completely exhausted and ready to crash. So crash we did, and hit the road again early the next day.
(I think the name of the campground was Massacre Rocks State Park; another part of our evening (or the next morning, I can't remember) was checking out the info at the visitors' center about the site itself, which was where a massacre occurred along the Oregon Trail. If I remember right, some white people were killed by Indians, but I don't remember why, or whether they retaliated, or what the rest of the story was.)
On Monday, we decided to shoot for Yellowstone. We got a nice early start, drove the rest of the way across Idaho, and made it to Yellowstone by early afternoon. Yellowstone is huge. I mean huge. There's a big main loop that goes around the park, and basically just driving 3/4 of the way around the loop took us something like 5 hours. We entered on the western side and were immediately greeted by views like this:
After just a little bit of driving in the park, we hit on some of the geothermal activity; Yellowstone is chock full of geysers and cool mud pits and things like that. I'd never seen anything like it before, and I really loved the weird colors, caused by various naturally occurring minerals and acids.
 |
| This is molten rock/mud caused by some sort of sulphuric acid bubbling up out of the ground. |
 |
| Geysers! |
We did stop and see Old Faithful, but honestly, the picture (and the geyser itself) were kind of lame. I mean, no, they were awesome, in principal. But if you can picture a huge jet of water spurting out of the ground, well, that's basically it. The coolest part was that we learned that given any one eruption, they can predict the time of the next eruption based on the height and duration of the previous one, but other than that, they only know that it erupts every 30 - 120 minutes or something like that.
Another thing I really loved about Yellowstone was the wildlife. It's just... there. Hangin' out. So we saw some awesome elk and buffalo! This one was on our hike:
 |
| Look closely, next to the telephone pole in the background. |
And we did stop and do a hike, which was really nice. It was only a few miles, but it was great to get out of the car, and get to the top of a cool little hill/ravine thing and get a nice view of Yellowstone Lake.
Jevon's favorite part of Yellowstone was this absolutely breathtaking valley we hit upon. We actually pulled over on the side of the road, got out of the car, and just gazed for a while. The pictures definitely don't do it justice - it was incredibly peaceful, and verdant, and just... soul-soothing.
The weird thing about Yellowstone is that it was honestly kind of overwhelming. The whole park is just so unbelievably gorgeous that it actually blows your mind, and after a few hours of constant, idyllic natural beauty, we were kind of ready to get out of there. It was totally weird... you could stay for a week, easily, exploring trails and fishing and being in an outdoorsman's paradise, but we both had sensory overload and decided it would make more sense to just complete our 3/4 loop around the park and call it a day.
So we did our 3/4 loop, down around the southern and eastern parts of the park, and eventually exited out the north, into Montana. Here we are making our way out of the park.
We finally made it out around 8:00 pm, I think, and we stopped at the first place we found for dinner, which ended up being a little lodge/log cabin deal just outside the park. Once we got some food in us, we were ready to drive a little bit farther, so we decided to cross the mountains into Montana before we called it a night. If I had known how long it would take us to the cross the mountains, I probably would not have decided to do that. But ignorance is bliss, and we did indeed decide to cross the mountains. On the bright side, it was fantastically gorgeous, even though the pictures don't properly convey it.
On the not-as-bright side, I'm a nervous wreck driving on mountain roads, and the sun was going down, so even though it was beautiful, it kept getting right in my eyes when we would round corners, and I would have nightmare visions of some car careening into us as we rounded the bend. Whee!
But we made it eventually, and Jevon graciously took over the driving, and we stopped the first place we could, which ended up being a rest area in the middle of nowhere in southwestern Montana. That was the only night we slept in the car instead of in the tent, and I did not get a good night's sleep, but Jevon did, so he started the next day off driving while I napped for a while.
That's got to be it for tonight, friends. Blog entries take a long time! Next up: Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
No comments:
Post a Comment