Idaho

There is interesting country along the back roads of Idaho and one can see this is definitely mountain terrain.  From a once prosperous gold mining area to a little cattle ranching, now firms offering river rafting trips everywhere you look, you can see that younger people have taken over from the prospectors.  Like Whistler, the occasional ski town has a 4 season focus by adding mountain biking, golf and mansion building (as in Sun Valley).

Taking a bypass from Boise we headed towards Craters of the Moon, a 750,000 acre National Monument that the Shoshone Indians passed through on their annual migration.  The volcanic activity here dates back 15,000 years and the most recent was as early as 2000 years ago.  There was never a massive volcanic eruption but vast volumes of lava flowed from a series of deep fissures.  The lunar astronauts trained here in 1969 and now a small part is open to the public via a 7 mile driving loop that winds through the park, taking you to areas of different lava.  There are examples of the dried flows, spatter cones, cinder cones, projectiles, and if we wanted to hike in 7 miles, we could also see some of the lava tubes and caves.  The following photos are a few examples of what we have seen in the past few days.

Snake Warning

Sawtooth Mountains

National Monument

Road Built over the Flows

Rope-Like Twists

Projectiles

A Cinder Cone We Climbed

Palouse Country, Washington

After heavy hail in Manning Park; finding cherries and peaches for $1 a pound in the Okanagan, and torrential rain north of Spokane, we finally arrived in the sunny Palouse country in southeast Washington. Who gets excited about wheat fields, or "the Dried Pea and Lentil Capital of the US". Why would that area appeal to anyone, or us?
Think of an area from Vancouver to Abbotsford squared, covered with rolling hills formed by a dust called Loess, anywhere from 12 to 18 meters deep.  This rich soil produces double the amount of wheat and lentils, unirrigated.
In the midst of the area is the Steptoe Butte that rises 1000 ft above the surrounding hills with a road that circles the butte twice on it's way to the top.  Mike and I spent several hours there at dusk last night capturing images of the amazing play of shadows and light on these dune-like hills.  Up at 5 am today to head back up for the dawn light, when half way up the butte Mike noticed that our gas gauge was on the very bottom end of the RED warning section.  Afraid we'd end up miles from any passing cars we headed back down and with our hearts in our throats, we crept into a gas station, after finding that the first station had a "No Gas" sign posted on the pumps!
Today we learnt to: never let our gas run that low; that the Nez Perce Indians called their spotted horse breed Appaloosa, after the Palouse region; that here a 'creek' is called a 'crick' and that yes, there really is a Lentil Ice Cream!

Contrasts

Approaching Storm

Dune-like

Wheat Harvesting 

Rolling Hills

New Power Sources

LEAVING HOME

Just getting ready to head out on a 5 week ramble to the US Four Corners region.  This is where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona meet at one spot.  Our first major destination will be Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico, followed by many sites we visited 20 years ago with Robin in northern Arizona, southern Utah and the mountains of Colorado.  Who knows where else?

In June 2013,  at 40* C and after a long 7 mile climb up a summit of 4000 ft our trusty Westphalia just couldn't make it!  All the bells and whistles were protesting so after a 2 day drive south to the Oregon/California border we decided to head back home, knowing that there were higher climbs ahead had we continued.  That was last year and now, after a new engine in Westie, we are going to try again.