June 27 - Drive to Pocatello, Idaho

Altho we were foiled in doing the Helena Volksmarch, we decided to pick up the state of Utah and capital of Salt Lake City while we were "in the neighborhood", so after breakfast we hitched up the trailer and started south on Interstate 15. We wound up in Porcatello, Idaho, about 7 hours and 320 miles of driving later. The first section of our drive from Helena to Butte and south to the Continental Divide was quite mountainous. Trees, mostly evergreen, cloaked some of the mountains completely down into the valley, but other mountains were relatively bare or just had a few copses, which was puzzling. I was left guessing about whether this was because of differences due to past clear-cutting operations, different microclimates, or different soils on the different mountains. Once we crossed the Continental Divide that forms the boundary between Montana and Idaho in that region, the topography changed abruptly. We descended from the divide into the Snake River Basin, a huge, relatively flat area that covered most of the eastern side of Idaho. The climate seemed quite arid; altho there were still irrigated fields, the areas that were not irrigated were just sagebrush and straggling grass. We tried to stop at a Subway for lunch, but the road was ripped up and I didn't want to risk hauling the trailer over the uneven dirt surface to get to it. So after filling the truck's tank, I made a tight circle in the parking lot of the gas station to get back out to the interstate and we continued on sans lunch.

We stopped to change drivers at a rest area located beside the Hell's Half Acre region south of Idaho Falls. This rest area had a very nicely placarded nature trail around the volcanic formations, which we naturally walked. This is a relatively young volcanic flow, being only about 4,000 years old, but the lava and basalt looked quite fresh as the desert plants were so slow to grow over the rock. The old lava tubes that had caved in offered some spectacular examples of tumbled blocks of basalt, but there were often bushes or even struggling trees at the bottom of these depressions because the shade and collected moisture created conditions where plant life could flourish. It was quite hot while we were walking, but I didn't even notice perspiring because the air was so dry the sweat immediately evaporated.

We parked in a RV campground in Pocatello for the night, but were just too tired to run over and look at the reconstructed trading post and museum a couple miles down the road. This was not because the driving was particularly difficult; in Montana we had no traffic but had to contend with driving thru mountain passes while in Idaho the road was flat but we had to contend with increasing traffic the farther south we drove. Rather, it seemed like jus sitting in a car (or truck in this case) and watching scenery roll by for 7 hours created some kind of mental numbness, despite the fact that the scenery was quite interesting. Just too much stimulation of the same kind, I expect. In any case we had a leisurely dinner, worked on the computers, and I called folks on the cell phone since we were once again in Sprint territory and I could use some of my "free" minutes. We wanted to turn in early as we wanted to drive down to Ogden, Utah and do a Volksmarch there the next day. Actually, I conked out on the couch already by half past six, which was really pathetic, but I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Monika finished her book and then we kind of fell into bed together.