Day 2 La Grande to Ogden

Friday August 6, 2010

We didn't have a wake up call scheduled so just slept until we woke up.Went to the lobby for breakfast; Carla brought her home made granola; I had an English muffin with peanut butter. We finally pulled out of La Grande at 8:45 (yes I'm keeping a spreadsheet). She tried to pull a trick on me saying "you go check out and I"ll finish loading the car." I knew she'd try to get the jump on me behind the driver's seat, so I loaded the car, then headed over to the checkout desk after making her promise she'd stay in the passenger seat.

We pulled into Boise around noon and I wanted to try to find the old Bob's Big Boy that was downtown; I couldn't find it; I think I should have stayed on Orchard instead of cutting over to Vista - but it might just be gone now. We parked downtown and walked over to the Basque district and had lunch at the Bardenay. It's a distillery that we had visited with the Boise crowd a few years ago. I had excellent fish tacos and Carla had salmon. It was a beautiful day and we ate out on the sidewalk. 

Before we left I grabbed a picture of the old still or whatever

On the way back we walked by Pengilly's saloon. Man I've spent more than a few hours in there. Last time I was there was with a huge crowd that gathered for Bob Reidelberger's funeral.

East of Boise we passed three GIANT oversized load trucks hauling enormous concrete I-beams. A semi-truck with large flat bed was hauling the front, then a big gap we could have driven under followed by an unattached trailer. We stopped for gas in Eden, Idaho then proceeded east of Eden :)  Now Carla was behind the wheel and before long we came upon the vehicles again. As we passed the first one, I did a double take; the unattached trailer was  driven by a guy in a cab slung between the wheels. Kind of like a hook-and-ladder truck. I'm glad there were 3 of them; I didn't get a decent picture until the last one.

Late in the afternoon we hit the Utah border

All afternoon we could see we were headed toward a storm. I'd say lots of lightening but that is because we hardly ever see any; it was probably minimal by Big Sky standards. We saw a couple of places where there had been lightening strikes starting brush fires; saw a crew managing a bit next to the freeway. We also had a long stream of smoke streaming up from the south over the highway.

We pulled into our hotel at 6:10 - another Best Western; then headed over to Jerimiah's (a restaurant Herb had told me about) for dinner. After dinner we went for a little walk behind the hotel and I got a dramatic picture of the clouds over the nearby mountains. It's amazing how the mountains seem to change in the evening as the sun went down.

No wake up call tomorrow; we have a shorter drive to Cheyenne where we'll take in the historic district and railroad museum.