Higher ground – and cooler air

Ok, back up into the mountains.  We are heading for Summit View campground in Caribou Targhee National Forest above Soda Springs ID.   Highs in the mid-80s and nights in the 50s, Ahhhh.  In Jensen and Vernal we pass all manner of dinosaur statue and sculpture.  Whimsical to true-to-life-fierce they stand watch at business, playgrounds, and city halls.  Beyond town, the route from the National Monument passes through more of the dinosaur valley with signs along the way reminding us what layer of rock we are passing through and who/what lived there at the time it was deposited.  Then we wind along Flaming Gorge, rugged with pines standing in contrast to the redrock.  Things level out and we glide though wide rolling valleys with grasslands as far as we can see either way.  We experience a Wyoming traffic jam.  Four cowboys on horseback moving a herd of cattle across the road….they didn’t all want to go that way!   We turn west on I80 and things get less scenic.  We are crossing broad alkali flats dotted with mines and wells and crisscrossed by railroad tracks and gravel roads carrying a steady flow of huge dump trucks.  There are signs warning of road closures while traffic waits for quarry dynamite explosions.  It seems like even this barren arid land deserves better treatment than this.  Probably not going to happen though, these minerals and compounds are used in a lot of stuff we consider essential.  Turning west and north into Idaho we first find lush irrigated farmland including brilliant yellow fields of flowering canola plants.  Soon we are in pine covered mountains and find our way to camp.  It is pretty remote with the nearest town with any sort of services over 25 miles away.  No cell service at all in camp.  It is cool and beautiful here.  Tomorrow, we head out to explore.

We had our first hick-up towing the pick-up.   The battery was dead when we unhooked.  No big problem, we just jumped it with the motorhome.  Still, it was odd.  We found no obvious reason for the problem.

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