The Great White North - Day 3 - "Boise Let Down"

Day 3 (7/13/19)

We have finally made it through the “boring” part of the trip and are about to head out to some places I’ve been looking forward to visiting!  We got out of Ogden decently early since we had quite a few miles ahead of us.  It could have been a quick day on the interstate, but instead of that we opted to go a little farther, hopefully get some better sights, and avoid the big highways as much as possible.  After all, that’s what these trips are all about right?  We headed up I-15 to Blackfoot, ID and then started north-west down 26 Atomic City.  All of it was a pretty boring drive to this spot, getting back to my previous point about avoiding interstates.  So my Uncle Al had been on a ride some years back where he went to Atomic City, and while there is absolutely nothing there, for some reason it stuck in my mind and was kind of cool just to go through there.  It was at this point I was starting to realize how nice it would have been to have my GoPro still.  If you’ll recall back to last year’s Vegas trip, it had fallen off the bike within about two hours of being on the road.  Just lovely.  I was really hoping to get some good action shots while equally not risking losing my phone.

We cut past the Craters of the Moon National Monument, a place I’d never even heard of before!  We didn’t stop, but from what I could see from the road it actually looked pretty nifty.  It sure would have been nice to have a camera handy to snap a few pics as we drove by…  We then moseyed down 26 into Arco to grab some fuel and eventually down 20 and into this tiny town called Fairfield where we stopped at the Wrangler for some lunch.  It was packed so we knew it had to be pretty decent.  We weren’t let down, nothing fancy, a sort of diner with very tasty burgers and extremely limited seating.  We were also going to fuel up again since we were stopped, but some jackass decided he was more important and cut right in front of us and snaked the pump we were waiting for so we said screw it and carried on our journey not really needing it anyway.

This is where I was starting to get let down a bit.  We’d taken this path and ridden along the base of the “mountains” to make it a much more interesting and pretty ride.  Well where was all the beauty?!  Southern Idaho is really quite bland to put it mildly.  Continuing down highway 20 we went through the “Boise National Forest” and as I looked left and right I saw about fourteen trees.  Now I’m no arborist or anything but I feel like there needs to be an abundance of trees in order to be classified as a national forest, right?  I would have taken a pic of the lack of vegetation, but again, no camera at the ready.

As we rode into Boise I was quite surprised at how hot it was here too.  I realize it’s July in a sort of higher altitude desert, but still, over 100 degrees?  Give me a break!  Luckily once we got to the hotel here their pool was working just fine, and the front desk lady even poked fun at the fact that the other pool was out of service, like “how could that even happen??”  Oh well, we were hot (again) and now had a large body of water to dip into the relax some.  Still being let down by the lack of scenery it was amazing to at least not be cooking anymore.  Side note: this was the only hotel that we had to get a roll-away bed, so we flipped for the big bed – another loss for me.

I also got to thinking, maybe I should go pick up a cheap digital camera, something I can tether to the bike and set in the tank bag so I can get some shots while riding too.  Bob and I got ready to go to dinner and first hit the Walmart in town where I was able to get a camera and some small paracord to make a longer lanyard.  The camera setup actually turned out quite nicely to have the rest of the trip.  From Walmart we headed to a more “hip” area of town called the North End where we had some dinner at the 13th Street Pub and Grill and chatted for a while with a lovely couple who’d moved to Boise from Washington state to be closer to their kid and grandkiddo.  They were nice to chat with because they gave us some great suggestions as to what to do in Washington, all things we wouldn’t have time for on this trip, but maybe in the future.  Again we flipped for who would pay for dinner, another $60 tab for me.

After dinner I made Bob go with me to drive up and down Harrison Boulevard to check out the cool houses I’d previously heard so much about.  I’m not going to lie, there were some impressive homes on that street.  Well that was fun, back to the hotel to charge up the new camera and make sure everything was going to work like I had hoped.  Sure enough, everything was great, and of course I had to test it out with a fine picture of my lovely cousin!