April 2015 – Wanderlets

The little town of Heyburn, about 35 miles east of Twin Falls, has a small RV park on the Snake River. The park is owned by the town and is located next to the visitor center in an aborteum park with paths along the river. RV parks that are county or small town owned are the best. They don’t charge a high price and there is always plenty of space between RV’s. We have a nice grassy lawn that Molly loves. We are staying two nights because today we drove to Shoshone Falls and then on into Twin Falls. We were at Shoshone Falls about 12 years ago but it seems much nicer now with a manicured park leading up to the falls. But the falls are not as forceful this time and the flow is controlled to the point where sometimes there is no water at all. It was a bad day for sightseeing though because it was windy, rainy, and pretty cold. The bridge in the picture below is right in a big shopping area in Twin Falls. Twin Falls itself is sure a nice town. Not too big and has a downtown that reminds me of the one in Grand Junction, except it’s a bit bigger and even nicer. There must be a lot of Mormons here because a church/temple that we passed by was enormous.

Tomorrow we plan to drive about 200 miles and might spend the night at the Oregon visitor center in Ontario, about a 4 hour drive from here. It will be chilly again tomorrow with rain here and there but after that it should be nice for quite a while. We want to spend some time exploring in the Columbia Gorge and for a change we might have good weather there.

Lots of space, full hookups, and free Wifi

Molly is patiently waiting for her toast — Molly would love to eat at the table with us

After spending three weeks at my mother’s house in Colorado Springs we decided to go to Oregon. I was having more trouble than ever breathing in the high altitude and felt terrible. We stopped at my brother Herb’s in Greeley where we spent the night in our RV parked outside his condo building. My sister-in-law Debbie fixed a huge and very tasty meal and later she and I went to Sprouts grocery store just a block away to get some fruit for berry smoothies. Boy, did I love sitting in their comfy Lazy Boy chairs and wished we had one in the RV. In the morning Steve found a poem that Herb left on the windshield that he wrote a few years ago called “The Watchers.” He is a talented writer with a mind like no other and is often a guest columnist for the Greeley, Colorado newspaper.

It is always very windy crossing Wyoming on interstate 80 and to avoid as much of that as possible we got up at 5 am so that we could get off the road early in the afternoon. Wyoming gas stations have a car lane vs truck lanes for diesel and they charge the trucks the lower advertised price and gouge the rest of us. We went to two gas stations and pulled right back out when we saw the price difference. So we went into Laramie and paid $2.39 a gallon vs $2.99 along the interstate.

Shortly after heading west out of Cheyenne the countryside turned white. I don’t remember seeing all the snow fences before. They go for miles and miles and make for intriguing scenery.

Later on, west of Rawlings, we came to a standstill for 1 1/2 hours due to an accident. We figured it must have been a doozy for as long as we were stopped.

The first thing we saw was the FedEx truck way off the highway out in the field. Then as we got closer we saw the other truck that was demolished. Not until I put the pictures on my PC could I see that it was actually two trucks one behind the other. Take a look at the contents. There were smashed bottles and cans of beer all over the highway that two men were sweeping up.

It looks like maybe the FedEx truck sideswiped the other two but it’s a mystery how it went out in the field so far.

We are at the Little America truck plaza near Rock Springs for the night.