We are in the first week of our 3-1/2 month road trip to the Eastern US states – from Alabama to Maine – returning through Canada and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Our departure from Kirkland, WA, on Tuesday was delayed by 2-1/2 hours – most of which was due to a dead battery in our truck. We are not sure if we left the truck’s lights on or if we fell victim to a known defect in the software that occurs when a software update is pending.
Angie, being the smart and experienced travel planner that she is, had planned a short 3-1/2 drive the first day. We camped at an Army Corps of Engineers campground in Plymouth, WA, on the shores of the Columbia River which forms the Eastern border with Oregon. Arriving around 7:30 pm, we found the mosquitos to be numerous and hungry. Hank got bit about 8 times – even through his clothes. We were tired from the mad sprint to prepare our house for renters while we are travelling, in addiiton to getting the trailer packed.
We arrived in Boise, ID on Wednesday afternoon at one of our favorite campgrounds – the Boise River RV Park – on the Green Belt Trail in Garden City. We celebrated with fresh mango margaritas and a light dinner. Angie started coming down with a sore throat, so we had a quiet night. The highlight was taking Charlie swimming in the Boise River along the Green Belt Trail.
On Thursday, we met Hank’s son, Jon, at the house he just bought in Nampa. We are very proud of how well he is managing his finances and his career as a software engineer. He just got the keys to the house and will be moving from his apartment over the next week. Luckily, his work schedule is pretty light this week. We enjoyed a delicious lunch on the balcony of the Tower Restaurant at a municipal airport with Jon and our dog, Charlie. After another swim for Charlie, we installed a new cover for our bicycles which ride on a rack on the tongue of our trailer.
After a leisurely Friday morning along the Green Belt, we buttoned up and hit the road for Hill AFB in Salt Lake City. It’s a beautiful drive on I-84 through wide open high plains. Angie got the best site in the campground with nice views of the Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake. It was five degrees cooler here than Boise. It felt cooler with the breeze. There is a lot less snow in the mountains than there was at this time two years ago.
Tomorrow we continue on to Grand Junction, CO. We aren’t dawdling on this part of the trip, because we have been on this route before and we’ve got a lot of miles to cover to get as far south as Alabama and Georgia before turning north. Our next social stop is in Denver, where Angie’s navy friend, Tracy, lives.
Gas prices have steadily dropped from state to state. Washington is a dollar more per gallon than other states due to the large tax for highway funding. But we have seen about 10 cents per gallon drop from Oregon to Idaho to Utah.
