Trucks

We are in Mountain Home, Idaho. We covered a lot of miles the last two days. There was little traffic, the interstates were in good shape, and we did not have to go far off the interstate to charge. Our hotel window in Mountain Home looks out at a UPS staging area or parking lot. Trucks come in and drop off their trailers and trucks come in to pick up the trailers. Regis is trying to figure out what is going on and whether they are taking advantage of the disconnect to go to the Flying J next door to fill up. Regis is happy when we stay in locations where he can watch activity like the ship port in Savannah, the ship traffic in Puget Sound, the ferry loading in Victoria, and here in Idaho watching trucks. Regis is trying hard to figure out what is going on with the UPS trucks, but he says it’s like a shell game, they keep shuffling trailers around and he cannot keep track. It is interesting to me what entertains him. I could not give a hoot about the trucks but have an ungulate walk by and you have my attention. (Jeff, if you know call Regis.)

The other day, my first tumbleweed on this trip blew across the highway and scared me. I thought it was an animal. I told Regis on the walkie talkie and a couple minutes later Roy Rogers was singing “Tumbling Tumbleweed” on my walkie talkie. Never a dull moment with Regis.

We have been enjoying the scenery as we passed through Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho. There were snow covered hills. Since all of our camping was in the summer, we often only saw snow early in the summer season and only on the tops of the mountains. It was interesting to see the landscape in a non-summer season.

After we arrived in Utah, we descended for a long, long time. It was so long that I told Regis I thought we would soon be in hell. A few miles later, there was a sign for “Devils Slide”, and I felt vindicated.

Dart has not been eating so I bought him a burger patty at Wendy’s the other day. We also bought him cooked chicken at the grocery store to supplement his wet food when it is difficult to feed him during the day. I think he won’t eat his dog food now because he is holding out for better options. He has no problem eating burger patties and cooked chicken, but he does not want his dog food. This is going to be interesting to fix when we get settled in Washington. He is in good spirits and we do our best to let him get in sufficient sniff time. He has trouble walking, so we cannot walk him far.

Our original plan had us getting to our new home on Sunday. If things go well, we will either pull in very late tomorrow evening or, more likely, arrive on Thursday. There is snow coming into the mountains overnight and the Tesla does not have tires for the snow. We either need to go through a pass (shortest route) or drive along the Columbia River. We have about 300 miles tomorrow to see how things are going and decide whether to spend the night and which route to take.

One of my favorite charging stations was in Twin Falls, Idaho and it was located at the Visitor Center along the Snake River. At this point it was raining, but Dart and I checked out the view and got a couple pics.