The Salmon River Canyon is almost as deep in places as Hells Canyon. I traveled along it for quite a while, crossing it and the Little Salmon thirteen times before I left Payette National Forest. Occasionally I just had to step out of the truck and walk along the river for a while.
Once out of the river valley at New Meadows, I was also officially out of the Pacific Time Zone and into Mountain Time. That meant I was truly in Southern Idaho. For about fifty miles, the right side of the road had been on Mountain Time and the left side on Pacific Time. I ended up at a beautiful campsite due west of Boise near Homedale, ID. This was gorgeous! Every site is grass and lush. Lots of trees. The Snake River was flowing right in front of the site. I spent three nights here so I could work with Mark on his new book, The Shiva Paradox. We sent it to the printer on Tuesday afternoon.
There were two downsides to this spectacular location. First, was the smell. Even the water attached to the trailer smelled like sewer gas and made a terrible cup of coffee. I was quickly into town the next morning to get bottled water.
And bug killer. That was the second problem. As soon as dark fell, thousands of little gnat-like bugs flew right through my screens and occupied every source of light in the trailer--including my computer screen. At 8:30 I had to give up, shut down every lightsource in the trailer that I could, and huddle under my blankets until morning. They don't have a long lifespan, so in the morning there were a lot of dead bugs. As soon as I sprayed the trailer, there were a lot more. I also sprayed all my screens so the little suckers couldn't get in again. Then I had to sweep up thousands of little creepy-crawlies. YUCK!
I left Homedale on Wednesday morning and after climbing to the pass ten miles south, I entered the flatlands. It was amazing. This is the Southern Idaho I remembered. I was going to stitch together a panorama, but it all looked exactly like this. The rest of Idaho and most of Oregon was like this, in fact.
A few miles before the summit of Blue Mountain Pass, I crossed back into the Pacific Time Zone. I'll be on Pacific time now until I get to Arizona, then it will depend on whether there is Daylight Saving Time still in effect or if the rest of the world is on Standard Time. I haven't sorted out which side the state goes to when it doesn't go on Daylight Saving Time. I'll find out when I get there.
At 5,200+ feet, Blue Mountain Summit was the highest pass I've come over so far. But the climb was only about 900 feet since I hadn't been below 4,300 for about fifty miles. Hardly even noticed I was going uphill. Of course, going down was the same. No curves. Just a long straight downward journey into Nevada.
Nevada has ridges of mountains surrounding the flat desert. The road gently curves to go around them, not over. What was impressive was that the speed limit changed from 55 in Oregon to 70 in Nevada with no difference in the two-lane road. Fortunately, there were enough long straight stretches of highway that semis who wanted to go 70 could go around my 55 pretty easily. I never changed the setting on my cruise control.
So that got me to Winnemucca, NV where I'm staying at the Hi-Desert RV park for two nights while I work on Bread for the Pharaoh and do a little sightseeing. Tomorrow, I'm heading somewhere in the general direction of Reno, though I don't know how close. See you then.
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