Monday we had an OMG never again day trip.

Others in the area have been blogging about this great day trip so off we went.

Yes we were going to the the top of the mountain. Sawtelle Peak is just under 10,000 feet in height, a full 4500 feet above the valley floor, and it stands out very clearly on a clear day, as above. The FAA long-Range radar dome is just visible in the middle top of the mountain.

Yep that's where we are headed. See the little while lines... That's the road. 

Looking east toward Yellowstone. 

Named after Gilman Sawtell who was the first settler in the area in 1868, Sawtell Peak forms the eastern end of the Centennial Mountains. The Centennials are unique in that they run west to east, unlike most basin and range fault block ranges in the region. This is most likely due to the movement of the Yellowstone Hotspot, which 1.6 million years ago formed the Island Park Caldera, one of the largest in the world, and is directly to the west of the Yellowstone Caldera. The range formed parallel to the movements of the Hotspot in a lever action as the weight of new magma pushed down on the southern slopes of the range.

Looking west.

Looking south.

Looking east.

At the very top... can't go past the sign. I wanted to get back down ASAP. I did not like it up there at all. 
I put the truck in first gear and creaked back down the narrow blind switch backs.

I have been on some high back roads but this took the prize. I will never do this drive, if you can call it that, again, me knows.
You to can take this drive and see for yourself. Yes a Virtual Tour of Sawtell Peak Road
Don't look over the edge.

Sunday Aug. 15

Rained Friday so on Saturday we took a fast run into West Yellowstone.

I was looking for a small gas or electric chain saw but none to be found that suited me. Got some groceries and then, what the heck took a short drive into the park. I have a Senior pass so no big deal. Even though it was free entrance weekend in National Parks. I sort of got questioned at the entrance as I gave the attendent my Senior Pass and SD Drivers Lic.  She looked at each and then asked me where in South Dakota I was from. I told her and she gave them back to me.  The DR Lic. has my address on it so why would she ask. It has my picture and I'm no look-a-like for anyone else, me thinks. 

At Madison Junction we turned left and ran into road work. I was in this backup till I inched forward after about 15 min. till I got to a wide spot and turned around. 

Picture of us heading back the way we came after they let me do a U turn.

Back in West Yellowstone on the west end of town their was a Renaissance Fair. Terry just had to stop and check it out. 

 

And on Sunday we went for a nice day trip. 
We wanted to find a road we had not been on before. So off we went east of Macks Inn to Big Springs and to the Black Canyon Loop Rd.

Black Canyon Rd is top center on map.
It follows the old railroad bed part way that used to go to West Yellowstone many a moons ago. 

Henry's Lake

The views were great but way at the top they had it closed so you couldn't take the whole loop drive. So we had to trun around and come back down the way we came. 

Part way down we detured and took Meadow Creek Rd which ran futhur north above the valley. Another great road to drive. 

Weather calls for rain on Monday so will sit tight and wait for the forcast of clear and warm for the rest of the week. May move or stay longer right here. Have a mail drop to get at the loacl post office if it is in on Monday. Who knows. Or next planed stop is right up the road at Henry's Lake and the county park. Did I say FREE with great views and you can stay for 15 days.
 
 
 
 
 

Thursday Aug. 12

It was just one of those days.

You know the ones, you just don't want to get out of bed and when you do it's after 9 AM. I was following the weather back in Iowa on my Droid Incredible connected to NPR. They had closed the major interstate north and south I-35 between Ames and Des Moines and about to close I-80 east and west due to flooding. Glad we got out of there when we did. 
(Getting great 3G signal here in the boondocks and all along the route since we left Iowa. Not once have I not had 3G. I listen to Pandora internat radio all night in bed bluetoothed to my Allanec Lansing speaker system by hooking them to a small 200W inverter.)
No sense running our huge 2000W full trailer inverter just for the small items.

Our neighbor in the site next to us brought over a couple of huge Cinnamon Rolls yesterday so we broke down and had them for breakfast. 

I didn't take a picture but you get the idea from this web shot.
Looked just like this one. They were at least three inches tall. 

That got us off to a full day of doing nothing. It was cool and overcast all morning so we just stayed on the internet and read. I get the USA Today newspaper online. Just like the print version each morning. Next the political news blog sites. By that time my head is spinning and it was time for a nap. Did get fired up enought to check out the status of our medical bills online now that they should all be done resubmitted through the process so they are correct. Remember they had us classified No Network for awhile. Found all correct so called the providers, they had teh new correct amounts, and paid the bills over the phone. 

OH By the way Terry got his fly fishing skills back in shape and caught several good sized  rainbow trout last night about sunset. Me thinks we are pretty happy here in northeast Idaho. May stay awhile...

Take a look at these two pictures of  Moose Creek just to the east of us at Macks Inn. (That's a town don't ya know)

What a relaxing view. There are boondocking sites alone this creek.

This is where we got the shots of the moose yesterday in the below post. 
 

Wednesday Aug. 11

Last evening Terry went fishing and a day trip earlier.

He didn't catch anything but had good strikes. He needs to get tuned into what is working as in fly patterns and such.

Doesn't he look in his element.

Later when he got back he cooked a steak over the open fire.  It was big so we planned on splitting it. We are trying to do less red meat, ya see. Good luck on that front. The forest service picnic table has a big Warning Notice label that warns not to leave even grills out at night. 

So we though just do it over the open flame. It didn't work out that well as my portion was tough and his was just fine. After a while we exchanged portions so he could experience my tough section and I could have a good bite or two of tender steak.
Might not have been the fire as we are used to good corn feed beef, being from Iowa you understand. 

Today we went for a day trip exploring the area and ran into these critters. 

How cool. 

We did pick up more firewood so campfires are the order of the day. 
More later, as I want to go have a fire again and Terry is going off fishing. 
6:30 PM and all is well.
 
 
 

Tuesday Aug. 10

We signed up for six days but may stay much longer.

We love using my Senior pass to get a FS campground for only $6
And look at how well done the site is.  There is a water spigot close enough we think our hoses will reach. 
I think we have moved in. 

And when the site is right along the Henry's Fork of the Snake River, that hits the jackpot. 
This is bear country so we can't leave anything out on the picnic table, but we can deal with that. 

See the river on the right. We can sit in the campsite and see the water flowing by. 

Macks Inn is the local burg with a post office where I'm getting GD mail sent to. 
I called them and they said sounds good to them.

Now does anyone want to go fishing? Terry got his lic and is getting ready to hit it later today. He sez the trout are raising so it's looking good he thinks. If it is great, hold on to your hats, I plan on getting an Idaho fishing lic. myself.  We are going to be in this state for several weeks so why not. A full lic is $96.85 Terry just told me. With campground fees at $6 I think we can handle that. 
Remember we styed at the county park at Rexburg for 5 days for FREE. This boondocking (dry camping) so to speak works well when we can find it. I read a blog the other day where they were in Williams, AZ and paying $760  a month and the electric was too low to run A/C, and the WiFi sucked. 

This is all such a wonderful area to be able to spend time in.  And we don't have to rush off to anywhere if we don't want to. 
Just relax and enjoy. No deadlines or schedule to keep. It's not like I have a rally to plan for, me thinks. 

We even found a huge pile of wood in a vacant campsite so I'm set for a great evening fire. All the wood is full of drilled holes for like bees to set up hives in or something. Think it should make great fuel for a fire. The holes are clean so don't think that plan worked out watever it was. 
It's only 4:50 PM. Got this post done early so I can spend time outside enjoying life in the great outdoors. 
Later.
 
 
 

Monday Aug. 9

Moving on Tuesday to the Island Park area. 

We have been in this county park near Rexburg for 5 days now and it is time to move on. 

We took a day trip today to plan and explore for our next stop. Have to find that perfect next campground stop. 
So off we went north looking at campgrounds we had explored years ago to see which ones where we might want to go back to this time.  One thing we found was they were mostly void of campers. Me thinks we do not have to hurry to get anywhere and can take our time as we move north. 

Our favorite find at this point is in the forest service campground right on the Henry's Fork River west of Macks Inn. This is looking east from the HW 20 bridge we are thinking about a FS site on the west side. 

Drove by Red Rock RV park on the south side of the lake and there were RVs out on the road backed up trying to get in. 

 

That is a busy palce, me thinks, now that Seeing the USA in our Chevrolet has been posting about this gem of a RV park all summer. 

Further west and then north driving around Henry's Lake we ran into a roundup and had to wait for a bit. 
Now we had shit all over the sides of our truck as they drove them for a couple of miles down the road. 
Not a big deal as these people live here and make their living do this. We are just visitors to their lands, me thinks. 

We will be staying later on while exploring Yellowstone at the FREE county park right on Henry's Lake with great views just round the lake from the Red Rock RV park. More on that later.

This Google earth shot of the FS campground in relateion to Henry's Lake.

Now time to do lots of fishing and explore Yellowstone. All in a relaxed mode as we have weeks to do whatever we want. 

Stop back to see where we decide to land on Tuesday. 
 
 
 

Friday Aug. 6

Updated... Most of the post was reworked at about 9 PM 

Slowly moving north in Idaho. 

We decided to move on before the weekend from the lower Snake River . I got on the web and looked at my Streets and Trips pushpins for locations I had found in earlier searches and next checked Google Earth for the layout of the land. 

So off we went to Rexburg, ID to the Beaver Dick County Park.

This park is located along the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River. Five miles west of Rexburg on HW 33

Oh and by the way the camping is FREE for 5 day limit. But beware no water.  A Farm and Ranch Supply and gas station on the west side of Rexburg west of HW 20 on HW 33 was real friendly and offered all the water we wanted. 

Our campsite for a few days over the weekend. They love their huge rocks around here. Makes backing tricky.

Right after we got here yesterday I spent most of the afternnon working to get our DataStorm Internet dish to lock on to our assigned satellite which is 22 thousand miles up in the sky.  (When you think about it, that's amazing)  I have been having big problems with this fulltime FRED for a few days now. 

I made changes to the satellite controller configeration file and no help as it was stopping every few degrees looking at the sky saying it was finding a satellite when there was none there.  I upped the signal trigger value all the way to 7 (this effects how sensitive the dish is to find satellite signals) and it was still stopping and looking at everything. If you have one of these you know what I am talking about. 

After serveral hours I broke down and called MotoSat tech support. They are sort of like all help desks, not all that helpful most of the time.  But this time right off the bat after I explained my situation he said I must be getting noise injected into the system by a bad coax connector. I said OK I will check, thinking he was giving me an excuse to just get rid of me. 
But sure enough on the back of my D3 control unit was a bad coax connector. Repaired it and changed the signal trigger value back to level 5  and it went right to the correct satellite and locked on. Faster than ever. I stowed the dish and redeployed it and it worked great. Now you know how happy I am at this point in time... 

We got back from exploring Rexburg around 4 PM today on Friday and (how bad of us) fired up our trusty Honda 3000i and turned on the A/C. It was about 90 outside and humid. Expecting some possible thunderstorms later (I've got the weather radio turned on alarm mode) so it should cool down as Terry wants to do a chicken on our new Weber Q100 grill. It's Friday night. Time for a cookout, me thinks.

As I type, the just turned on weather radio went off with a warning for this area.  May I say the word Shit...
Time to batten down the hatches... Bring in the trailer slides etc.

Later... Not much happened, a brief blow and a few drops of rain. 
Terry got the grill back out and we sat outside while he cooked.  A fine time in Idaho tonight.. 
Cooled off and is now about 73. (9PM) Windows open and think great sleeping tonight.
 
 
 

Wednesday Aug. 4

Well into Southeast Idaho. 

We got held up on posting since our Datastorm Satellite is a FRED after all, and refused to find and sync up to the satellite so we could get connected.  After posting about our problems on www.datastormusers.com we are now back online. It just started working again and nothing we did really helped, me thinks. 
But happy is happy so now I can connect without using my Droid in tether mode. Lucky we have had a great 3G sig all across WY and also in SE ID. Way to go Verizon.

So now I need to do a blog post...

We hit the road and left the hills of Laramie and got all the way to the west side of WY. 

We stopped at Kemmerer at a so called RV park... not much to speak of except it was $30 a night. 
The other option in town was $35. 

But the town was nice and had just had a music festival event over the weekend, we just missed.
I liked the town hidden down in a valley away from the winds of winter. Nice downtown square and well kept bulldings. Great grocery store. Full service with deli and bakery with an attached liquor store. 

Next up north to Alpine and on west on HW 26 in Idaho.

The dam view at Paliasides Reservoir west of Apline. They had full hookup pull thru sites with $8 Senior Pass.  We took a close look and had lunch there but decided to move on.  You know me I just had to explore to find that perfect site on down the road. It was just noon after all...

We did at last land at Kelly Island BLM campground. and YES at $5 a night with Senior Pass at Heise, ID. 

Our site at Kelly BLM campground right on the river. We had to settle for a site not right on the river but within view as the two river sites were double sites (wanted double fees). 

Now for some pictures of the Snake River 

As you can see it is prime water release from the dam so we don't think there is fishing unless you have a power boat. 

These guys looked like they were having fun.

 A view along the way of the Snake River.

We went for a day trip but did not find any spots we could pull our 5er to.  The road along the river on the north side were just to rough to ever pull a trailer over. And the water was too high to fish anyway. 
We will stay in our nice BLM site and day trip from there and determine when we will move on and when. 
But for right now we are happy to enjoy life as we find it. 
Temps are warm but not hot and cool breezes so who could not be happy. 
 
 
 
 
 

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