Iowa to Wendell, Idaho…

When I left Fairfield, IA, it had been several weeks since my phone had worked…turned out that on virtually my entire drive to Idaho, it only worked a couple times and only near big towns. At this point I was still trying to discover if there was something wrong with my phone, or with Tracfone’s coverage. Turned out that their coverage map is a total lie. They do NOT COVER the entire US and Alaska like their map shows. Lying assholes don’t cover more than 50% of the US from my tests. What’s even more annoying is that if you call their tech support, they lie right to your ear…first asking your zip code, then telling you Yeah, we cover that town. When it still doesn’t connect and you contact them later on using chat, where there’s a record, then it’s NO, we don’t cover that town. Really madding they are allowed to get away with those total lies that might get someone killed someday if they drive just south of Savage, MN and need to use the phone but there’s no service where they expect there to be. As if it hasn’t happened all ready. And this lack of coverage where there are cell towers is in great swaths of the mid-west. Right in the same towns I visited are active Verizon, AT&T, and others. Tracfone just won’t pay them to carry any of the Tracfone customer’s calls. As I said, maddening. I went almost two months without phone service.

Well, anyway, after leaving Fairfield, headed straight west as it was summertime and I wanted to drift north for cooler weather. My destination was to be Twin Falls, Idaho because it’s cool there, there’s some Snake River activities I wanted to do, and there’s a RV park I wanted to stay at in Wendell. I planned on staying there a month and then drift over to Burns, Oregon where my home VA Clinic is, for my yearly checkup.

So this series of pictures is a lazy way to avoid having to create text. The trip was uneventful, taking 4 days of 6 hours per day. Through Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and finally Idaho. What’s interesting is the contrast in flora. Going from mostly green, to mostly desert like.

The above picture is as I’m nearing Omaha, NE. The following pictures are just random road shots as I cruised along, mostly on 2 lane country roads. Tried to avoid the interstates this trip just for the fun of it.

And ended up heading into a strong weather system. Here’s a little rain. Got pounded the next day though.Here in Nebraska, just before getting to the Wyoming border, ran into this big rain storm. It was only like 11AM so I kept driving instead of stopping at the first RV park I passed. And soon I had water dripping down onto the dash. Doh! Oh, and drips streaking down on the inside of the window. All 3 leaks in the drivers view. Next day it looked like this in Wyoming. Note the plastic coffee can I’d taped to the window to catch the water as it streaked down the window…onto the dash if I didn’t catch it like this. This did prove to me that when I’m parked in one place like at Cat’s house in Iowa, there’s no dash leak, but when I’m driving 60 MPH, the rain is forced into a crack and it leaks into the window frame, than finds it’s own path finally showing up in 3 places on the dash. I suspected that it was the running lights that were leaking because I’d put protection above the window seam. And here I am near Laramie. Most of these roads skirt the big towns in this part of the country. They’ve got lots of room to put their highways. Notice how the land is now devoid of trees for the most part? Went through one remote area that had these industrial settings. No signs or anything, so I have no idea what they are. Don’t really look like oil producing plants. Oh, wait, this could be oil. Yeah, probably a refinery. This pic is as I was leaving a RV park, and only had one day left of the trip, I realized I hadn’t taken a single picture of the RV parks I’d stayed in the first 2 nights so stopped, jumped out and took this one as I was in the driveway getting ready to leave the place. It’s a KOA and cost $44.81 after discount. Not worth it. Only RV park easy to get to with a large RV. Wind was fierce and no trees to block it. It was a relief when the RV parked next to me and blocked it a bit.See? Just a dry ol’ scrub brush area. Hardly any improvements to the place other than grading and adding services. Now in western Wyoming and there’s a bunch of these facilities. I passed an area where there were hundreds of them scattered around the unoccupied countryside. Only saw one where there was a few workers trucks parked nearby. Miles later I passed a small town with a Sinclair Fuel giant refinery in it. And it was funny that the only fuel station I could see from the freeway was a Sinclair and it had very high prices. And it was only about 4 blocks from the refinery. Dahyum, those oil companies are brazen. Eventually get to a place where you can see hills and such. And now in Northern Utah, the Cache National Forest area.  A lake somewhere along the road. West of Logan on US30. I had taken the freeway in some places but usually I was sticking to the plan of taking back country roads away from the freeway. Got over on that other side of the lake and there’s quite a remote mountain town next to a lake community. The highway snakes up the mountainside at a long steep angle so it was white knuckle time and I didn’t get any pictures looking back down on the town and lake. Lots of ritzy homes around there.

Eventually the road T’s into I-15 and then it’s fast driving (55-65 MPH for me these days) on to Wendell, ID.

And here I am all situated at Intermountain RV Park in Wendell. Thing about this park is that it’s got new owners so it’s more expensive than it should be, $27/night or $167/week, but it also has a RV repair shop right here. That’s handy, and that’s really why I wanted to stay here. I’d made it a destination before I left Iowa.

Check out that my satellite dish is deployed. Somehow, it found a crack in the tree branches and I actually got a signal. Strange. But the Wifi sucked at this space so I asked to move the next day.

Here’s a little water garden they put in lots of hours restoring. Kinda cute. At first I wondered why there were so many people at this park clear out here 20 miles west of Twin Falls (which has many RV parks), and then realized July 4th weekend was upcoming. One of the biggest RV weekends of the year. I was happy I’d found a space and paid for a week to span that craziness for RV’ers. The Wifi was weak there at the last space but this new space was much better. Here I had a direct view of the Wifi antenna. But the satellite dish couldn’t find any satellites after 45 minutes of searching so I shut it off and just watched local TV for the 2 weeks I was here. Those two weeks gave time for me to order parts, find a shop in town that could replace my cars AC compressor, get the vent covers installed on my RV here at their shop, and generally visit the area. Kinda fun. There’s a huge economical grocery store here in town too. Oh, and a great Mexican restaurant, The El Tapatio, go there if you’re ever in Wendell. The auto shop is really economical too. Gonzalez Auto Sales & Services. And they work on RVs if needed. Nice little park. I really liked all the shade trees as it was hot. But they don’t have a monthly rate and I wasn’t going to pay $668/month so I planned on moving to Hagerman after my second week here. Got all the work done I felt was needed on my RV and car so I was happy about that. This is looking from the front of my RV over towards the RV park’s shop/office building where the Wifi antenna is. It’s also looking at the relatively clear shot at the southern sky…and yet my auto locating satellite antenna couldn’t find any satellites. Dammit. Did not figure that out. Something weird though. It looked like a much better southern shot for the antenna than my last RV space in this park, but it just couldn’t find the satellites. The owner tried to tell me this grassy section is ‘filled!’ with tents other times of the year but not during July 4th weekend? I doubted it. They were trying to justify the high prices for monthly, which was 4X the weekly, no discount given. What the real reason probably is/was, is that they just bought the place last year, and they’ve got a huge mortgage they’re trying to pay down. Plus they’re from California so… Anyway, I really enjoyed my stay in Wendell, ID but ran out of things to do the first week around town. Drove east the 22 miles to Twin Falls and visited them so I’ll have that report next time. They are beautiful so you won’t want to miss them.

Thanks for reading!