Exploring Old Haunts and New Discoveries

 

  As many know - Carol and I love the Southwest and especially southern Utah.  Maybe the contrast to our home state of Washington or just the abundance of weird and fascinating rock landscapes brings us back year after year. This may seem redundant to some, but every time we venture to these parts we discover and explore new areas and places. We also take different routes and see new places along the way.

    This year our path takes us across Washington, Idaho and through western Montana before we head south from Butte and explore Grand Teton N.P. and eastern Idaho.....or maybe plans will change along the way.  The nice thing about being flexible and having our self contained "tiny house" which we nicknamed "ObiWander". is it allows us to change plans as we hear about or research an area as we are passing through.

            Our favorite way east is the North Cascades Hwy - the Washington Pass Overlook


(.....so the above I wrote the day before we left on our trip with the above itinerary as our projected path.  However there were concerns about wildfires - especially in Montana and then while spending our first night out along Banks Lake in eastern Washington, we saw the reports of snow and cold temps in Montana!  Realizing we missed our window to spend time in western Montana and floating some of the beautiful rivers, .....well we decided to head south.  So, that is where we begin).

   Today we are in Heyburn, Idaho, about 45 minutes east of Twin Falls.  When we revamped our trip we headed to Baker City, Oregon, starting along the Coulee Corridor that runs along Banks Lake down to Dry Falls and beyond.  Beautiful country we had not visited before.

                                                      Lookout above Dry Falls Lake

We love Baker City, OR and spent 1 night there and had a great IPA at Barley Browns downtown which we remembered from our last time through.  We missed lunch at the Lone Pine which is a great restaurant there as we had to deal with a malfunction of our slideout on the trailer. Next time!

   We spent the next time at Glenn's Ferry where there is a great state park on the Snake River and a nine hole course at a nearby winery.  Yes we are going to play some golf (ie. a lot) and this was our first of the trip

                                     Overlooking the Snake River at Three Islands Crossing

                                                             dinner in our little trailer!

  Several friends have mentioned "City of Rocks" which is south of Twin Falls, so we are now in a great little city park in Heyburn and yesterday explored the area south of us including City of Rocks which is actually a very popular climbers area but a fascinating place to drive through and hike in.

Lots of crazy formations and beautiful countryside.

Well Thanks for Watching!!   We played our second round right here in Heyburn at a very nice municipal course and are heading out for a riverside bike ride.  We leave tomorrow for guess where?

UTAH!!!

More to Come!

Don and Carol