Good day went bad!

July 13 – Not the best day ever, that’s for sure!

We decided to top off the propane tank since we’d be arriving tonight where we’ll be for 7 weeks and might need the propane for heat some nights.  Then we were having trouble with the error message on the leveling legs again, so we didn’t leave until 9.  Then a wine glass was left hanging on the rack instead of put in the cabinet and it fell and broke all over!  Not a good start.

As we drove on out and on our way to Craters of the Moon National Monument, the legs control kept beeping and we finally pulled over and I redid them and it stopped for the rest of the day.

At the entry of the monument
with a field of lava rock

The road to the monument was really nice road, no traffic but mostly 2 lane.  The only elevation issue was actually in the park so we had nothing to worry about after all.  I was tickled to see 2 belted Galloway cows mixed in with others along the road but they were really easy to spot.

We barely fit into the parking space at the Visitor Center for RV’s.  We watched the 2 movies they offer, checked out the exhibit, bought some “stuff” in the bookstore and decided not to drive the RV on the loop.  So we ate our lunch then

Inferno Cone

unhooked the car and headed out to see what the park had to offer.  It looks a lot like Sunset Crater NM in Arizona but we did get to see some things we’d never seen, such as Splatter Cones.  You can’t describe what all of the cinder, lava rock, types of lava flows look like.  It’s amazing to see fields of black rock and mounds of it like a plowed field.  Then you see the volcanoes side by side 7,000 years old and 2,500 years old.  The difference is the amount of

Crater fragments

vegetation on them.  The loop drive was great with some walking paths to follow taking you further into the lava fields.  It was quite breezy there today and even on the chilly side for shorts a short sleeves.

Do these mountains have a name?

It didn’t take long to hook back up and get back on the road towards Island Park, ID.  Bill had called in a prescription to his Dr. this morning and we needed to pick it up in Rexburg at the Wal-mart.  The weather was rainy on and off, not the most pleasant for driving, but the drive itself was really an easy one.

We had hoped to make it to the Forest Service office before they closed but it was around 6

One of our choices

and raining.  Bill had called our contact ranger for directions of where the campsite was for us.  We decided to park at the office and drive the car back to the spot to make sure we didn’t get in a pickle.  Her directions were awful.  I don’t think she’d ever been back

No, this one is better!

there. We could not find any campsites and luckily caught a guy getting out of his truck going to some kind of government housing and he’s a fire fighter and once Bill read him the directions she gave he got us on the right road but agreed those were terrible directions.  Well, when we drove to the sites, we were speechless.   It was worse than most of the “Deliverance” campgrounds we’ve seen.  It appears to have been a camping loop at some ancient point in time, but was now all grown up with weeds, and machinery thrown around and the spaces were very narrow and didn’t look the least bit level.  There were junky RV’s

Maybe along here....

and other vehicles back there.  You can’t imagine how upset we are.  Bill has been so excited about this assignment from the beginning, knowing that weekly we could go to Yellowstone on our days off.  Well, what a let down.  There was no way we would consider taking our RV back there.  There could be snakes, more ants and mice, and we think we just got rid of the mice we had.  So we pulled the RV in along side of the office and dry camped for the night.  We have mail coming so we can’t leave the area until it arrives but we will talk to the people tomorrow and let them know this just will not work for us.  We can’t imagine that anyone would stay back there. 

I guess we will get a campsite somewhere for 3-4 nights and get online and look for another volunteer opportunity.  Maybe there is something at Yellowstone, who knows.  The cell service is non-existent also.  She told me what great cell service, but I guess not ATT.  I have 1 bar so did manage to text with Kam but that’s it.  Maybe near the resorts we will have better luck tomorrow.  So, we will see what tomorrow brings.