Chaos Leaves Town

Note to readers: Sorry about the delay, I’ve not been myself lately. The previous delay between posts was due to a necessary hospital visit for surgery and this time it’s been because of a week long illness. It seemed to be a powerful version of the flu that I was lucky enough to have had my shot for so some of the symptoms were reduced or missing altogether. But still, in this area of the country I’m currently staying we’re seeing one of the largest outbreaks of flu in the country and I caught it. Day before yesterday was the worst day of them all with fever and chills all day and night but today, I’m feeling much better. I hope the length of wait between this post and the next won’t be so long.

I’d been in the Snake River Canyon area for a couple months and had plans to do another raft trip down the snake but my brother and nephew began to talk about some music venue called Big Bottom Music Festival. Hmm. A music festival huh? And my nephew would be playing? I’d be up for that. It’s outside of Randle, Washington and apparently has been in operation for over a decade but after I decided to go, had a hell of a time finding information about the venue anywhere online. Well, whatever my brother and nephew told me I couldn’t get lost and they’d have me follow them in when they got to Randle since I’d get there before them and would be staying at the local RV park.

And off I went…

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Just a short post about Hagerman and environs nearby. Several things about the town I like that involve bike riding. There are several halfway strenuous hills I can ride up every day, there’s a couple of interesting bars with grills. One is Wilson’s Club. Nice older bar where I was hanging out one afternoon and a slightly tipsey young women comes in and heads straight for me. Wants to talk and be all friendly like. Sure, I got no problem with that. After a while she joined her friends I spent some time checking out the antiques all over the bar. They had a couple nice IPAs on tap, flat TVs with the games on, and a typical bar type kitchen.

Then across the street is the Riverboat Restaurant which has a bar too. Here’s the thing about that…I went in one night and had dinner at the bar, local fresh caught fish. It was soooo good that I came back the next Friday for the same meal. And the gal that cooked it poured the salt on it. It was barely eatable. Terrible. I asked and it was the same cook…the bartender recognized me and remembered me getting it before. But…Gag.

Next week, I tried the Snake River Grill and had their Idaho Rainbow Trout. Yum. Everything was excellent the two times I went in there.

There’s three different flea markets in this town for some reason. More than I’d expect for a town this size. Also has an elders food pantry. Sort of suggests there’s lots of retired people here. It’s a smaller town and by all appearances doing well with no visible homeless population or even what I’d call a poor section of town. Here and there are some long abandoned homes for sale that didn’t sell in a timely manner but that doesn’t indicate a depressed economy for the area really. And those homes in the area for sale or not are well kept up. I did read an article in the local paper about the city council fining homes with junk in the yards, giving them X days to clean it up or pay the fine so I guess they are working on getting the town cleaned up. And it looks pretty damn good right now, so good job! Since I was touring the town on my bike, I got a street level view of most of the towns neighborhoods and they all look pretty nice. At least now they do. Never been here before so have no idea how it looked just a year ago.

Did some wandering around outside the town just to see what it’s like here…I headed NW along the Snake and stopped here and there to take pictures. Occasionally I’d cross over to the other side and see what’s up that road. Regular tourist stuff. These are all pictures from my Android phone.

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If you remember from last time, my Olympus camera was ruined by the raging Snake River…it got sloshed on while I was rafting below the Hagerman dam. A few days later I was browsing at the flea market at Billingsly Creek a couple miles from the RV park and happened upon a camera sitting on the shelf with other older cameras. Its a little blue camera by Fujifilm and has a big XP label on the front. The battery was dead of course and the guy was asking $20 for it so I passed because it didn’t really look like much of a camera and it wouldn’t turn on to test. For one thing, it doesn’t have a telephoto lens. But printed on the front cover is: “Waterproof” & “Shockproof” and also strangely enough, “WiFi”. Huh.

Went home and looked up the model number of the camera, Fujifilm XP95, and found that it has pretty much the same specs as my Olympus, with the exception of the 24X optical zoom telephoto. The Fuji only has a 5X optical zoom. Understandable since the thing is waterproof and to achieve that, you can’t have a articulated lens extending from the body of the camera. And it’s listed at the same price as a new Olympus.

Went back to the market and bought it for $15. Back home, hooked up a power supply to it and voila’, it works! Ordered a battery charger and 2 new batteries and after they arrived I now have a $100 camera for $30 that I can dunk in water or drop or whatever and it will survive. I’d learned to baby the Olympus, but I’d ruined two of them so far over the years so maybe it’s time to try a different model. I will miss the telephoto feature of the Olympus, but the shockproof, waterproof, and dustproof features of the Fuji make up for it.

Anyway, here’s the first picture I took with the Fuji, good 16MP resolution, color saturation is to my liking, anti-shake works well, nice 3″ view screen:

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You may remember from last time, that I was staying in Wendell (even though I mis-titled the article – since fixed) and visited Shoshone Falls on July 4th. After that visit, I was pretty enthused about staying in the area for a while. It wasn’t as hot as I’d expected for this dry desert like area and the weather was really nice for something else I wanted to attempt. And that was a raft trip down the Snake. I’d seen brochures about it my entire life and here I was near to a rafting company. I’d seen their flyers around town so figured I’d try to take one of their several trips on the Snake.

I’d decided that I wanted to move because the Intermountain RV park didn’t have a month-to-month rate in July and was asking too much for a weeks stay ($180), and I’d found that RV park in Hagerman so emailed them and they had an opening. Plus I’d gotten the deliveries and repairs I wanted done there in Wendell so no reason to hang around. I reservered 3 nights at the Hagerman RV Park even though I was thinking about staying at least a week, maybe a month, because I wanted to first be sure it was a nice place with half way decent Wifi. Hagerman RV park isn’t the only park in these parts but it looked like the one with the best shade for the July and August weather so it was my first choice.

So, I moved:

It only took an hour to decide I wanted to stay a month, Wifi is very fast, so went back to the office and exchanged checks, this time paying for a month. They ask for $325/mo. plus a $75 deposit on electric. Lots of shade here, a scarce item at the other RV parks I’d looked at on the internet. Continue reading →

Hanging around Wendell has it’s advantages. With the amply stocked grocery store, the RV park with a RV repair business right there, the auto repair shops, tire shops, a couple excellent restaurants, etc., etc.. However, there’s not much to do in town. No theater, no golf course nearby, no night life to speak of. The town is pretty small with just a couple places to hang out, nondescript bars that could even be called dull. Tried to pry some history of the area from locals but nobody really knew much other than the story of how Wendell got its name. Well, whatever, while I’m here waiting for RV and car parts to arrive it was an opportunity to drive around the area and check it out. Going east and south of Wendell driving along the farm bordered roads you run into a larger town…Jerome. Jerome has a theater, a WalMart, and several businesses that cater to the RV crowd as far as repairs go. Interesting as I drove around the populated areas close to Jerome how I’d spot many RV type businesses. Diesel repair, body shops, etc.. Most all situated right alongside the freeway.

But today was a day to explore so I drove due west and south of Wendell towards the Snake River. And soon bumped into the Hagerman Wildlife area and Fish Hatchery. Big hatchery place. Larger than the hatcheries I’m use to in the Columbia River Gorge area.

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Last time, I was complaining about the Tree Town Festival, and I’m done with that but I will mention one thing that happened as I was preparing to leave the following Monday. Most of the RVs had pulled out so there were only a few of us scattered here and there on the big grassy field. While I was in no hurry, I did notice that there was a honey truck roaming around and emptying holding tanks for RV’ers. So when the truck got to hooking up to the RV next to me, I went out and asked them how much they were charging, because ‘convenient’. Had to laugh when the guy told me they were asking $125. Literally, I laughed at the guy. He wasn’t surprised at that reaction however, had a bit of a crooked smile. Why was that funny? Because he and I both knew that less then 1/2 mile away were 4 dump stations that were free provided by Winnebago since we are on their property. And then 2 miles away in the town are free dump sites, at least 6 of them all in a row, all easy to get to, all free. So, yeah, wow, $125. Going to the dump sites might have cost some delay time due to lines, but from what I saw, not long at all. Well, it was only money. I really didn’t need mine dumped for that amount so I waited.

And then I had to decide whether I wanted to stay in town and gripe at Winnebago service for screwing up and charging me all that money ($1700 or so) and only sort of fixing my problems. I was pissed. But on the other hand, I’d only seen the rear slide pooch out once so far, maybe it’ll get better? I didn’t realize they didn’t fix the dash heat at this point. Too hot to need it anyway. Plus the heat pump A/C was working sooooo good, very quiet, smooth air flow, that I felt I might give them a little slack. Judgement call.

It’s the afternoon the day after the Festival, and I decided to stay in town and stay at the town’s RV park, spent the night just to check it out. Stayed two nights while I roamed the countryside and took pictures, all the while repeatedly checking on the bedroom slide. Which behaved.

Here’s a shot of the small town of Lake Mills, IA. Another small town in the mid-west that’s gotten to be over the top nationalistic. There’s nothing to indicate this is anything other than a flag display. I did tour around and there isn’t much here. There is another Winnebago factory but that’s about it. I had planned on visiting a cafe that had been recommended but didn’t find it.

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Last time, I mentioned that I’d bought tickets for the Tree Town Music Festival, and that I was disappointed that I’d paid $525 for the RV parking space I’d chosen. The map was slick and professionally done, except they manipulated it in  such a way it seemed like I was just steps from the front gate for the venue. They kind of took liberties with the drawing of their RV parking areas. Turned out that I was like 1/4 mile from the venues main (and only entrance) gate. Which was not in the same location as the map showed it.

But that wasn’t the only disappointment. This festival is in the middle of the country and the excessive nationalism was on full display, which included a truckload of good ‘ol boys standing up in the bed of their pickup truck cruising around the parking grounds, swilling their Bud light beer, waving their oversized southern surrender flags, the bars and stars. In addition the overt religion on display was rather off putting too, but that was nearly all by the stage announcers and many of the acts. The jumbo trons meanwhile, kept up displaying support for war and guns nearly non-stop between promoting up coming acts and local businesses. Several concert goers had the surrender hats or shirts on. I saw ONE person of color at this concert, a black guy who was working on one of the big generators. That’s not exactly the kind of ‘inclusion’ I like to see at concerts.

But I’d chosen to buy the ticket and be here so tried to make the most of it. After leaving the Winnebago customer service park, it’s a 1 mile drive to the entrance gate of the venue. I had planned on waiting a day before coming over but there was already a line of RVs entering the grounds when I drove over to check it out in the car, so I went back to the Winnie lot, hurriedly packed up, attached the car to the RV and headed over to the entrance to get in the RV que.

Two hours earlier when I’d been here in the car scoping it out, there was only one of these lines filled up with RVs. Now there’s 3 of them. And the lines are moving, though slowly. All three of these lanes get necked down into one lane. There’s a forth lane being filled up too as more RVs showed up. This area is just behind Heritage Park. One of those parks where they’ve bought and moved entire houses here to display how life use to be in these parts. I wanted to visit but it never opened the week I was in the area. Seems they missed a golden opportunity with all the people nearby as it’s a paid style museum. I would have visited for sure.

The wait was long enough that my engine was off most of the wait, and some folks got out and wandered around, beers in hand. A couple drunk guys spent 20 minutes just in front of me trying to talk up a couple gurls in their car. They resisted so the guys eventually wandered off. Continue reading →