Yes, my destination of Starbucks can be seen in the
second to last picture. It was a cool, large Starbucks, and I actually
remembered to fork over an extra dollar to buy the local newspaper, which I
didn’t always do a good job of in every new city I visited. After I was done
with that errand, I got the car out of the parking garage and drove south on
State Street looking for an auto repair shop. Since I’d already racked up over
3,000 miles on the journey, I needed an oil change, and I noticed to my concern
that there was still some salt caked on the bottom of the car. On the way
there, I did like I did in Vegas and had the camera out and shooting as I
slowly crawled around downtown. There’s some of the Mormon tabernacles unique
to this area, and other nice modern buildings:
You can see some light railway in some of the
pictures in the middle of South Temple St. The oil change went as planned at
the shop, but the salt problem was even worse than I’d realized. The mechanics
lifted up the car to change the oil, so while it was up on the lift I could
clearly see that the whole underside was still covered in salt, despite the
powerwashing from yesterday. The mechanic even asked, “did you try to clean the
salt off?” And I was like, “Yes! You tell your manager I power-washed the salty
areas for 15 solid minutes and for whatever reason there’s still a lot left!” I
left the shop wondering if it was ok to drive to Boise with all that salt
eating away at my car.
I’d gotten a call from Tim Henning, the uncle of my
friend Brian in Dallas. He was calling from his home in Boise, asking when I’d
be arriving. I told him that I was waiting on an oil change and would then head
out after that. He said that was fine, if I got to Boise too late for dinner
then he and his wife would bring home some barbeque from a cookout they were
planning on going to that evening. I said that sounded good, and I’d keep him
posted on my progress. I pulled onto I-80 briefly to get over to I-15 driving
north toward Brigham City, and snapped some pictures of downtown along the way:
With some mild traffic, it took about an hour for me
to reach Brigham City, which is right off of I-15. I hadn’t had lunch yet, and
this meant it was the perfect time to load up on another double-patty burger
and tots from Sonic! You don’t eat healthy on vacation right?
I was still a little concerned about the salt, but I
got back on the highway for the rest of the 340 mile drive from Salt Lake to
Boise. It was a quick drive, the speed limits in both states were 75. Music to
my speedometer. North of Brigham City, Interstate 84 breaks off from I-15 and
goes northwest toward Boise. The terrain away from the Wasatch Range was mostly
yellow plains, not too much to see. I called my friend Justin some time after I
crossed the Idaho border, and was catching him up on the trip so far, when I
saw…an inferno:
The cabin of my car smelled like smoke after that,
go figure. I got to Twin Falls, Idaho about 3 hours after leaving Salt Lake,
210 miles in all. I had just wanted to stop for a latte at Starbucks, and I
could still see the smoke from miles away:
The final price of the latte helped me figure out
that Idaho’s sales tax is 6%. I hadn’t planned on seeing this, but these
pictures show why this place is called Twin Falls, or at least that there’s a
deep valley and river running right beside the town:
You gotta love the full mustache on the man in the
last picture. That big arch bridge was the one I’d crossed over to get to the
town. Pretty neat natural feature to stumble upon in the midst of the plains of
Idaho. After Twin Falls, I kept zooming toward Boise at 80, and it began to
rain as I drove on I-84:
This turned into an unexpected power wash for the
underside of my car. It was around 8 when I reached the outskirts of Boise, and
by now you know how I like sunsets:
Charlie Roch had advised me to underexpose clouds to
see the details better, and the results were better than I expected:
I’d been texting Tim Henning to let him know I was
running a little behind, and exited the highway at Eagle Road, to drive a few
more miles toward the house. Boise is one big grid like Phoenix and Las Vegas, so
it was more than 3 miles north of the highway to the house. In the meantime, I
caught a few more shots of the pink and orange glow on the horizon, and the
rising moon:
Boise’s wide open views of the horizon and flat
terrain (within the city) reminded me of Midland’s open skies to a certain
degree. They’re both dry places as well.
I pulled up to the Hennings’ house and got to meet
them at last, and they were very nice, they gave me a generous helping of
leftovers from the Labor Day barbeque they’d just gotten back from. I spent a
little while just eating my fill and getting to know my hosts. Tim asked me if I'd seen the grass fire earlier, and I said yes, it was fierce, I could see it for miles away! Their little
daughter was sick so she wasn’t around much. I told them I would just be
staying one night, and heading to Portland the next day. I didn’t have a host
for Portland, but my friend Grant Sheehan was working on that. The Hennings had
prepared a room and bed for me, which was oh so comfortable after the long
drive. I turned on the ipod, put the headphones, and drifted into sleep…
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