Day Three

Mileage: 57656
Location:
Bend OR --> Rexburg, ID

This is Howie, Lisa and Jerry. Ted is in the bathroom.

By the way, the comments are fixed now, so that anyone can comment. Sorry about that.

Today was primarily a day dedicated to getting ourselves from Oregon towards Yellowstone, so we left Bend super-early to get ourselves into the car. Crossing Idaho was quite a feat, especially because we wanted to stop and see neat things along the way.

We left Bend and drove West, which was particularly neat because we ended up following the old Oregon Trail (albeit in the opposite direction). Lisa surprised us all with her marathon driving, relentlessly pushing us on with her strong endurance. I'm glad that all of us are safe drivers, and I feel comfortable in the car no matter who's at ht ehelm.

Our first stop was in Vale, Oregon, which is a very, very small town that prides itself on being built and raised on the Oregon Trail. The main street is only a few blocks long, and it was remarkably quiet. All the stores were closed for Monday, save a Dairy Queen, the library, and an antique shop. We noticed on the walls that even the local high school sports teams needed to drive over a hundred miles to play their games. This was definitely Middle of Nowhere, America.

The neatest part about the town is the series of very colorful murals painted on buildings throughout. Many of the buildings were particularly old; some were run down, but others have been restored to appear like they did in pioneer America. The murals illustrated scenes from these times, making the pioneer element of the town tangible.

The sun here is incredibly, incredibly hot. I'm glad we did our route on the Trail with cars rather than vans. Ted: "The Oregon Trail is like car camping!" Howard: "Yes , but with a wagon. And horses. And NO CAR."

There was a rodeo at Vale for July 4th that night; although we didn't catch the rodeo, we did catch the art fair in the local park. It was a nice break to hang out with the local residents-- 4 H had a spot set up, and we stopped to purchase cotton candy and cookies. We found ourselves in the petting area meeting goats (goats are very, very cool) and baby cattle and a bunny rabbit. I'm sure we caused quite a scene; we were the biggest "kids" in the petting area. We struck up a conversation with a woman who worked on 4-H and was a teacher's assistant, but managed a farm with her husband as well. Ironically, she was originally a self-proclaimed city girl, but her daughter like animals so much that her husband (a lawyer) decided to move out of the city into the country.

She shared a lot of her knowledge about farm animals with us. I was particularly surprised by her attitudes towards eating the animals, and the lack of any sort of response from the kids around us. She talked frankly about killing and eating the goats, and about the superiority of milk cattle meat to actual cattle meat. Milk cattle meat has a yellower fat, she said, that has an excellent taste.

We left the petting zoo to gnaw on BBQ turkey legs, sweet corn on the cob, tamales, and to worry about Jerry becoming burned in the sun.



Leaving Vale, we approached Glenns Ferry-- if you've played the Oregon Trail game, this area was an important river crossing. We stopped to walk around, and the area was exactly how I imagined it as a child. Snake river winds and turns alongside sheer cliffs of rock and grass. Sitting in the shade, sheltered from the relentless sun, we had a brief, brief idea of what crossing the trail would've been like.

From Glenns Ferry onward, we hit Route 30, which we missed most of but catched some glimpses of neat waterfalls. The route follows a gorge that was carved out by Snake River. It was gorgeous.

Snake River, by the way, is incredibly long and windy. It continues to intersect our paths, even as we approached Idaho.

In Idaho, we stop at Wendy's for dinner and our first Idaho potato. And now we're here in Rexburg, ID. Idaho people, by the way, are very very short. I feel tall, and even lisa is above normal here (based on the population at Wendy's).

It's neat being able to drive across these regions that we learned about as a kid, and get a feel for what this part of America is about. The scenery is beautiful and sculpted from granite and dreams.

Onward!




DOES ANYBODY KNOW IF WE TIP FOR FULL SERVICE GAS?!!! HELP!