Going home

27.08.2017
Inese writing:

The month has passed quickly. It seems only yesterday, when we were in Istanbul to fly over the ocean on a great trip. Now we are back in Istanbul to fly to Riga already. Transfer bus from the hotel to the airport at 11:00, therefore each of travelers spend the time differently. One part tries to acclimatize according to the time zone – sleeping and going for a late breakfast, but Glebs, Rihards and Dace after early breakfast – go to the Old town of Istanbul.

At the airport: the standard procedure – passport control, security check, last souvenirs, but some of us are sitting in the tavern and relaxing. A few hours flight and we are back in Riga.

The Lost Day

26.08.2017
Atis Edvards un Niks Jānis writing:

We are safely boarded an airplane and now we are flying from San Francisco to Istanbul. This could be considered as a lost day since we started the flight yesterday, August 25th. I slept the largest part of the flight, I was up only during one movie and when the flight crew kindly issued a tasty dish. When I woke up my brother was touching his monitor, only 15 minutes were left to fly.

When we arrived, we went through the airport controls and headed for the hotel reservation desk. We waited a little and soon we were heading for an airport shuttle bus. I felt pretty relaxed while driving and when I was looking through a bus window to Istanbul. We went to a somewhat quieter place reaching a beautiful hotel. We checked in and came to our room to get beds ready. We realized that we did not have blanket, so we called reception and asked to bring a blanket to us. At first, it did not come and did not come. After we called again, they brought us the sheets. Then we called reception for the third time and finally they brought a blanket. We were all set up.

We ate our wonderful delicious pizza that we took with us straight from San Francisco Italian Restaurant. We know that at least part of our group went out to see the city. We also wanted to go and look at Istanbul. The view from the hotel balcony was nice. But we realized that we were very tired and went to bed. This was one of the shortest days.

Leaving America

25.08.2017
Kristīne writing:

After night spent in Europe Hotel & Hostel modest apartments in San Francisco main drivers are to wake up pretty early to return the rental cars. Also we want to return to Walmart some stuff we bought during our trip. So Agnese, Imants, Salvis, Kristaps, Juris, Ilgonis and Daumants are on their way to Oakland while others may sleep longer this morning.

I use this possibility and wake up indecently late, after 9 a.m. Then packing of bags trying to push in more than there is free space. Luckily Juris has one bag he doesn’t need anymore. So I am finally done with packing all my belongings and souvenirs and snacks that I am going to take to Latvia. Check out is at 11 a.m., but we can leave our bags in one room the hotel provided us for longer. After that we have some free hours till leaving for airport. Me, Niks and Dace decide to go to Chinatown just to walk around and may be buy some (more) souvenirs.

At 2:30 p.m. we all gather to leave for airport. We go to Bart (train) because it’s quite comfortable and pretty cheap way to get straight to the airport. At the Bart station we say goodbye to Agnese. She is staying one more night in San Francisco and going to Riga through Los Angeles and Moscow. Seems to be longer way, but no – Agnese arrives in Riga only two hours later than we do.

In airport there is the usual crowd, luggage checking, passport control and safety control. I occur to be unlucky enough to make safety control officer suspicious that I am trying to bring a knife on board. Finally it turns out that the suspicious item is my flash memory drive. Safety officer kindly offers to pack my bag again, I kindly say no, pack it by myself and it’s done, I’m in.

After some waiting boarding to Istanbul is opened. We fly again with Turkish Airlines. It takes little more than twelve hours from San Francisco to Istanbul. Must admit during this flight I feel much better than in all my previous long flights. I even manage to sleep time to time. There are two meals during flight and free drinks. So everyone tries to spend his time as much comfortable as it possible by eating, drinking, watching films, playing games and of course sleeping. As we fly towards east we will arrive in Istanbul in August 26, little after 5.p.m. And it’s already another day and another story.

As for me August 25 is the day I really feel like my trip has come to its end. I feel little sadness, because no matter how long was the trip, it’s always not enough. But I really enjoyed it. And there will be other trips and new adventures as always.

The Day of Big Trees

24.08.2017
Ausma writing:

1st and 2nd team wake up in Motel 6 in Medford, Team 3 in motel in Weed. We take a quick sandwich and go to the Rogue Valley Inn motel to have some breakfast. This motel moved us yesterday, because there is a reconstruction and there were no places for us. Some of us have coffee and juice, others cornflakes, and then we go on a long journey to San Francisco.
The first team will try to drive to Walmart supermarket to give back the stoves and pans.

We drive along the road 190 towards the ocean coast. On the way, we are accompanied by fog and smoke coming from a burning forest near coastline. Ocean was gray, with large waves, foggy. As usual, we collect some small rocks from the ocean coast.

We drive through the Redwood National Park – on the edge of the road there are huge sequoias – very large and tall trees – biggest trees in the world. We are stopping everywhere in the road pockets, taking pictures, and flying like children through the sequoias forest. Daumants is very glad that we are in the big sequoias forest, not just seeing some trees as at the start of the trip. Impressively – the forest is in the mist, only at + 15*C outside. We are joking, that acclimatization for Latvia begins after the heat in America.
We drive along the historic 101 road, which is often referred to as the Redwood Road. We go to the Thomas Kuchel Visitor Center, named after a US Senator from California State (1953-1969). There we learn about the Sequoia trees and Redwoods. It is interesting to compare sequoias and redwoods: they are plants of one family. The Gigant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) are more than 3200 years old, 300 ft or 91.4 m high, a mass about 3500 tons, a diameter at the base – 40 feet or 12.2 meters, the seed is like oat flake, but the cone is like chicken egg – they are the thickest trees on world. In turn, Coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) are the longest trees on world: more than 2000 years old, up to 370 feet or 112.8 meters; mass about 1200 tons, diameter at foot 22 ft or 6.7 meters, seed like tomatoe seed, but cone like olive.
Soon we arrive at the Redwood Giant’s Avenue, which looks like a snake above and below the 101st road. Again we are in the Redwood Forest. Again stopping, taking pictures and trying to find the thickest and then the tallest trees, apart from the sequoias of redwood. In the roadmap it is written that somewhere there grow the oldest and largest trees in the World. I am not sure if we found it, but the remains we saw were both thick and long.

We visit private museum of Minerals. Ilgonis and Maris as experts buy some items (minerals, rocks, fossils and meteorites), for their home museum, others just visit the exposition.

We ride cars through the old sequoia tree, which does not show any signs of life. Glad to pay $ 8, to capture the moment, how our cars go through this tree. It turns out there is also an alive tree that you can go through for $ 5, but it stays for the next time. Team 1 traveled through that tree – Chandelier tree (height 315 ft, diameter – 21 ft, age 2400 ys) in Leggett.
Time is running on and we drive to San Francisco, still on our way to Walmart supermarket, because we need to buy some food for breakfast.

750 km traveled during all day and we are at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The sun has just set, but it’s a little light to finally see the bridge without a fog. We take some pictures; the wind is so strong that blows us off the feet, it’s cold.

We go to the bustling stream of San Francisco streets and it was hard to see the sign of Europe’s hotel & hostel on Brodway street, because other advertisements and signage were so bright. Maris has the sharpest sight and sees the letters above the very narrow door. We quickly load and shovel all the belongings from the car, because tomorrow we will transfer the cars back to the car rent. 5352 miles or 8563 km on the roads of USA are done. We drag the bags to the room on the third floor by very steep stairs. The room is full of stuff. The drivers go to look for car parking; the rest are struggling with suitcases. Need to pack for the journey back home.

Good night. This will be our last night in America.

Driving south again

23.08.2017
Kārlis writing:

We are at Portland Suites Airport East motel. Another day, another early morning. Jump out of bed. All right, you got me! It’s not a jump, it’s more like a fall out of bed for me. Have a quick shower. Run…, no, not for morning exercise, run out of milk. No problem, made some hot water in microwave or on our mini gas stove, sorry, don’t recall. Put some porridge in it, as usual 2 packages each (kids included, why do they make them so small, anyway), some of us took sweet ones, some unsweet corn based ones. All tasted good. We put some real coffee in our cups and waited for the best taste. As usual, we also got some fruits. We made some sandwiches for later and put all daily food in two bags, one for each car. The rest of food went in cooler bags. Dishes were cleaned and we had 4 minutes left to collect our staff from the room. Three minutes and we were done. Here we go. Not so fast! We still had to solve a daily puzzle of squeezing our never stop expanding luggage, pots and pans included, into our cars. Well, not as hard as it may sound, we were all very experienced already at the time. Now we’re done.

The next navigation target fixed to Crater Lake, Oragona located at distance of about 240 miles from us. About 350 miles were planned total for us for today (it’s about 550 km – that’s specially for you folks who still live in metric). Ole, we are on a road again.

The road to Crater Lake was easy, at least from point of view of navigation that I did. “Take LEFT after one and a half mile”, “Copy that”, “Left now!!!” — this was how our radio conversation sounded. Maybe such kind of conversation does not seem to be very interesting for a reader but I suppose it might have been very useful for us at a time.

Just after making the last turn on the Crater road (just right after that last “left now”) the traffic suddenly stopped. Forest around had been recently damaged from a fire. Tree trunks were black and missing needles seemed to be needless. Somewhat little bit surrealistic view. And no one here to feast us with carrot bites. And I forgot to mention the fire smoke that still was smelling in the air. Under such circumstances looking around the destructed forest we spent about endless 15 minutes in traffic jam. Then we started to move inside the National park reaching the North part of the Crater. Due to the slow traffic, the officer at the park entrance did not look at our National Park Entrance Card (if needed I will refer to it as NPEC from now on) instead he was waiving getting every car inside as fast as possible free of charge. Not that it is important, just to conclude it was completely useless for us to get the NPEC out of a car shelf (I knew this new introduced acronym is going to be useful one day).

Last few miles and we got close to the very top of the crater rim. The parking place turned out to be foolishly full. We decided that our drivers will find some place to park and the rest of our team jumped out of cars. At he beginning we climbed up a path getting at the very rim of the Crater and then we got a little disappointed from a view we saw or rather what we did not see. Everything was in a foggy smoke. The opposite side of the crater was just imaginable, the central island, called the Wizard island that is in fact volcano inside the volcano, was partly noticeable. Where are all the heavenly colors that we expected to see? Where is the blue sky and greenishly blue crystal clear water in the lake? Beside that outside temperature was quite low, now I understood, the lake is so clear because it gets its water from the melting snow that is visible on several places around the crater. Later we had a chance to get closer to such a snow pile. Yes, it is a real snow indeed no doubt about that. The lake surface is about 6200 ft above sea level, let’s say we are at 2000 m or higher at the crater rim.

Next to the road there was a fire truck. Far away in the Western part there was some large smoke clouds and fire still going on. This time the forest fire started a few days ago by lightning strike. It has been monitored since then but generally fireman do not fight any small (is this small?) forest fire letting it end naturally. There was an information board set up with actual forest fire information. Some roads have been closed because of that. Our roads were opened. We met other teams at the crater.

Rihards decided to join another team that was thinking about swimming in the lake. Although I’m not sure if anybody took a swim at all in the Crater Lake that day. Anyway, it seemed too cold for rest of us and we decided to go to the next vista point at the Eastern part of the Crater (in fact I am not sure if viewing point is called as vista point in Oragon. Isn’t it only in California? Never mind, you got the point and we got to the point.)

Crater looked a bit better from the next viewpoint. Possibly fog started to clear a little bit or we get used to it or Sunlight from this direction was showing more of the lake. We took another series of pictures. Juris and Kristaps decided to walk uphill reaching the Watchman peak. It took them about half an hour there and back.

We continued to the Visitor Center and had some time at this viewpoint. There we met Rihards, our team was complete again. So, we started our way to Medford making a few stops between. We drove through a very nice forest with large pine trees around the road and hills in front of us. Very nice view, especially after many desert crossings.

We arrived at our supposed motel in Midford after 6.00 pm. Almost at the same time the team two arrived. We all were tired and thought to have some nice rest this evening because for the next day there was even a larger way scheduled ahead us. For our unpleasant surprise, motel administration said “Sorry, we have some construction going on. No free places!”. I and Ilgonis, we tried to reach Agnese on phone several times about motel booking information but failed. She was out of mobile coverage. At this stage we got to know that at this moment only free nearby places for a reasonable price were left only at Motel 6, here in Medford and in Weed. The weed was place closer t Sanfrancisco were we were heading and it also has been considered as our potential staying place before.
Additionally we took into account chance that any place that we will not take may become occupied any moment and we do not want to spend a night on a street. Since Motel 6 at Medford seemed to be no better as Motel 6 at Weed, Ilgonis called and made reservation for all our teams in Weed. Besides Weed is about 100 km closer to Sanfrancisco, we thought. We were tired but we decided to moved to Weed.

Not to go into more details, at the end our teem number 3 appeared in Motel 6 in Weed but the teams number 1 and 2 stayed at Motel 6 in Medford that the initial motel had arranged instead of their overbooked rooms. Kristaps was ready to go back from Weed to Midford another 100 km, but rest of us were feeling too tiered. So, we all stayed in Weeeeeeed. Just after we arrived at the motel, three fireman tracks followed us. There was no fire there, it turned out that firemen were working somewhere out in forest and stayed overnight in the same motel.

A few minutes later we went out for a dinner in local Hi-Lo café in Weed. They even were selling souvenirs like “I love Weed”. Just to explain, the town in fact had gotten its name from its founder of the local mill Abner Weed. What did you think? Anyway, the moto of Weed is — “Weed like to welcome you!”. This day ended not quite as planned but we were happy that we decided to have a little bit more rest and to move on at about 9 o’clock tomorrow morning. We went to bed. End of day 25.

North Oregon

22.08.2017
Gļebs writing:

Our day started at 7 am in the small motel which was located in North Oregon street in Pasco town, Washington state. Our departure time was planned for 9 am and we almost reached our schedule and drove away at 9:10 am. Our next stop was Oneonta Gorge on a creek flowing into Columbia river near Portland and it was approximately 320km away from our motel. Our drive took some time – a little bit less than 3 hours.

We parked our cars nearby and started preparing for our extreme walking route to the waterfall. It was in the canyon through the small river with some obstacles such as fallen trees, rocks and deep level of water. We successfully went through this route and some of our crew had time to observe another stunning waterfall (Multnomah falls) nearby. After that we were staying in a big traffic jam near the park’s exit.

First thing which we saw in the Portland was our friend and angel – Walmart and we made our usual shopping. After a long run and hard day we were literally shocked when we came in our hotel – it was luxurious and cosy. Evening was spent in the city centre where we were observing life in a real American city.

It was another good day and with positive thoughts of the next day and a little sadness of the soon departure back home we went asleep.

A Couple of Minutes in One Moment

21.08.2017
Kristaps writing:

On the road, something grabbing passes by and wakes me up, it’s already over 6am, light and very dusty. For a change I slept in the car tonight. I did not want to get cold again, yesterday someone had seen a rattlesnake and warned us about it when coming from the Painted Mountains, and there are also fire ants here. Full set. Besides, we returned to the camp late last night, when many of us had gone to sleep very early before the day of the climax of the trip, and I did not want to disturb them in the dark by rustling around in the tent when setting up my place. Enough of excuses. I did get cold anyway, the warm hills of yesterda had cooled the air down to + 15 ° C in the morning. (I train looking at the thermometer at regular intervals.)

Yes, I have a thermometer! Agnese had by the way sent information about NASA Citizen Science project on the eclipse, called GLOBE Observer, where every wannabe scientist can participate by recording data on natural processes on the eclipse day. I left the preparation up until the very last night before the flight, when I decided that if I had the opportunity once, then why not try and I adjust one of my UKHAS.net nodes as a thermometer – I put the display, the solar panel, fixed code, then again and then again, and ready, works. Because DIY is better than buying!
With the GLOBE Observer, however, there is a problem, the application requires the internet, but of course there is no such in a desert. Well, ok, I’ll record the data just for my joy.

The sky is clear, just a thin band of clouds in the southern side. While still sleeping in the car, I looked at it, trying to figure out where it was going, and decided that everything would be fine, as it looked like it calmly slided past and would not approach. Daumants, however, investigated it more critically and expressed pessimistic comments on how everything will be bad.

It’s only half past 6, but the road to the park’s parking lot and the parking lot itself is already full, but the stream of cars is just flowing and flowing, till there is an endless line on the road. The idea was already mentioned yesterday that some might not go up in the Painted Mountains in the morning, but will stay to observe the eclipse right here at the camp site. I like this more and more, as almost all the drivers and passengers of the visible cars will go to the mountains, but there really is only a road and a small roadside on the hill where to stand, so it smells like a crowd for a couple of hours. It can be that the solar eclipse is a very social happening, I do not know yet, but it doesn’t tempt me. Salvis and Laura will stay here, yay. I courtesy ask again if this will not be a private event for them, but no, and the three of us stay at the camp, take mats for laying down and climb higher up the hill – closer to the Sun.

At 9:07am the moon begins to bite in the cheek of the Sun, which from a round pancake slowly transforms into a classical [Latvian] patty. Meanwhile, it has slowly become dark and much cooler. The two others even put on their jackets, I was not so provident. 22 minutes after 10am is THE moment. As we look through the special glasses that hold off 99.99% of the light, we see how the sun disappears completely, and removing the glasses is woooww .. It’s so unusual, it’s dark around, there are three or four stars or planets visible in the sky, I think they are Venus, Pollux and Capella. It seems that you can see the sun’s crown – something there looks like three huge rays.

It is not completely dark or black night, it is quite deep dusk – Ilgonis later says that it is due to the same clouds that dissipate the light from outside the shade. Yup, even at the place which by statistics should have the slightest chance of clouds, there are clouds. At first they were on one side, but now they have already taken over all the sky. They are thin, transparent enough to see the darkened Sun, do not interfere too much.

Two minutes and four seconds pass in one moment. Too fast. Although my camera does not really allow it, I am still trying to capture in pictures the darkness in the middle of the day for memory, until Laura suddenly exclaims: “Kristap, look!” And this is the best view – a diamond ring, a moment when the Moon still covers almost the whole Sun and only the very edge of the Sun has gone past. There is still visible the pale ring and the brilliant Sun, which for people in ancient times has probably looked as a diamond. Impressive and thrilling view. Was it worth it? Yes!

Well, and beyond all in the reverse – once again it becomes brighter, warmer, the world is waking up, cars start to drive, the masses dissipate, and all the eclipse-tour participants gradually return to the camp to share their impressions, gradually gather their belongings and prepare for the road.

After this only entering Washington is in today’s plan, where a visit of LIGO Gravitational Wave Observatory is scheduled for the evening, but there is still a ride of several hours to Richland.

It turns out that a congestion is possible even on such a outskirts and in a desert. Back to Mitchell to send out postcards we get fairly quickly, but there are many miles after that which we do in a walking pace. This is not Yosemite, here nobody offers carrots while being in a traffic jam, a shame. When traffic finally disperses, one of our drivers lets his feelings wild and then talks to the local police about the consequences of speeding. Nothing too bad, just a warning.

The following road is fairly smooth and runs along the Columbia River, which separates Oregon from Washington, but we don’t get to cross the river that soon. The bridge has been narrowed and there is an accident somewhere, resulting in another giant congestion in which we spend more than an hour. In this way we may be late LIGO! In fact, this is the case, because we have to be there at 6pm, but we are there only at 7:30pm. The second team has already managed to check out everything and leaves when we just arrive. Fortunately, the tours are still going on. It is quite interesting in LIGO Gravitational Wave Observatory. Comments on how meaningful it is to throw in such a money in order to have only two validated gravitational wave occurances and another potential one within these years I will keep to myself, but it is interesting enough anyway. LIGO is a very sensitive instrument (although not the best in the world), its resolution is less than the the size of an atomic. A large instrument seeking to measure vanishingly small. It senses both the wind-induced pressure on the walls of the building and even such distant events as the ocean waves off the coast far away in Alaska. True story.

After the excursion we visit the local amateur astronomy club’s star-watching event at the car park for a bit. As far as I understood, they do that on a regular basis on Mondays or so. They have two telescopes, through which one can look at Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter is as usual, but I have not seen Saturn this year yet. It’s always interesting to look at the planet with ears, and here in the south, it is much higher above the horizon than in our latitudes.

We find the city of Pasco and our motel quite easily, and, hey, even here they have a pool! If it is there, then it should be used, but the water in it is coooold. This is no longer the hot south. Bit by bit also other people who are awake come around the pool to simply sit and talk. The first team, unfortunately, did not reach LIGO, they had to spend about two hours in that huge congestion to Washington. Well, maybe tomorrow morning?

The evening is spoiled a bit by Rihard’s arguing with Agnese about me and my arguing with Agnese about it. I expected something like this all day long, it is not a surprise. The problem is apparently that Rihards is not getting to drive enough, but in turn I have reservations about his driving style and attitude. And also, both me and Agnese have rebuffed him without even knowing it. Not sure why other main drivers can drive when they want, and I need to be some sort of exception. At the end, we reach an agreement that he will be driving for two hours in the morning. Gleb says that I have to bear “for only three more days, three days!” Someone else adds that it’s a bit of a feeling that everyone is fed up with everyone and we just need to wait the end of the trip. Oh, well.

The Day Before the Eclipse

20.08.2017
Māris writing:

We woke up in chilly Oregon’s morning near the lake in camping (in the vicinity of Baker City). It was supposed to go to Mitchell. Day was quite sunny, it became warmer, as the time went by.
For some time we were driving roads in deep forests. Then forests ended. We entered a dryer Oregon region. We could enjoy a nice view of mountain range ahead of us (in the west). A stop is made, and group’s photo is created at the old style looking carriage.

After a couple of hours we arrived in Mitchell. The town was full of cars of eclipse observers. Some buildings looked like those seen in western movies. A discussion was taking place what to do. There were doubts about whether we should go to Ochoco National forest (as was initially planned). While in town, some conversations with local people were made as well (about education, guest students etc.). There were expectations to meet arriving fellow Latvian E.Veide in Mitchell, but we did not meet him. The action plan for the eclipse was discussed. In the end it was decided to go directly to Painted Hills site. After visiting it, a place outside the parking site where to spend the night, was found. It was very close to Painted Hills area (within a walking distance). In early evening Ilgonis played harmonica and sang. There was a nice sunset, but clouds raised some concerns.

We were hoping for a good weather the next day.

Hell’s Canyon in Idaho

19.08.2017
Dace writing:

We woke up in little town Weiser Idaho at Colonial motel. We ate breakfast in Senior center for 6$. Here was a breakfast “party” in honor of Solar eclipse with live music. One old man played piano, others were singing. All this was very kind and lovely.

After we were in market in honor of eclipse. Our team played a local game against American guys who were working there. Our players Gļebs and Niks Jānis got a T shirt as a gift for good playing. Then all cars went to a little hot springs swimming pool in a campground. Here was a group meeting. Madara told her strong opinion about driving speed on the road. After that our course we went to Hell’s canyon.

A boat trip was great. We saw a young bear on cost area. This was a wonderful adventure in the wild nature. Snake river, as in other places as well, was diverse, beautiful and wild. The captain of the ship did his job great. He knows the river perfectly, reads the current and leads the ship through serious rapids. The canyon which the river flows through has high cliffs which highlights the natural flow of the river. During the trip we stopped on a small sandy beach where we were offered water or lemonade. Some of us went swimming. Gļebs built a mini dam which he lowered after. When getting back on the boat, we had to wash our feet in a bowl to not bring sand in the boat. This trip was very inspiring, exciting and fun.

In the evening we went to a campsite where we prepared supper and build tents. This was a nice day.

Idaho – the state of potatoes, fountains and hot springs

18.08.2017
Agnese writing:

Bliss, the place we stayed at, is very close to the total Eclipse path (~130km), so we are not in too big rush anymore. Still, the people in 3 of our 6 cars have decided to do a shortcut and not go along the scenic routes to the little town Stanley over the mountains. The other 3 are ready for the small detour. The road (Sawtooth scenic byway, road nr 75) gets nicer with every mile and we go over a mountain pass more than 2.6km high. A small parking area with a beautiful scenery soon after that where we not only see the mountains of Sawtooth ridge, but also some curious animals, maybe groundhogs.

Soon after we arrive in Stanley – Lonely Planet guidebook says it’s one of the most beautiful towns in the US. I must admit that this place is indeed pretty. Wooden houses on hillsides surrounded by mountains still having some snow. However, there were couple of other towns where we have passed through during this trip that have been pretty as well – just in a different way.

We agree to walk around and leave in about an hour. Stanley had its own tiny town center and its very own Wall street which doesn’t at all resemble its namesake in New York. We pick up a geocache here, others meanwhile are having breakfast in the local cafe. The food is reported to be tasty, but the highlight here is the bathrooms – decorated so nicely as if this was a palace.

After visiting Stanley we continue on another scenic byway – nr 21, named for Ponderosa Pine. The pines are indeed dominating the scenery. So much that we get a bit bored by looking outside. Luckily there’s another stop planned to chase the sleep away – Kirkham hot springs. We put the 5$ for parking in an envelope and drop it in a box – there is a ranger to check the parked cars for the parking note which comes from the envelope, but the payment system is similar to that of the first-come first-served campings. It’s relying much on the responsibility and honesty of people so can be easily abused. But it’s easy to see what we pay for (people keeping these places clean, maintaining toilets etc), so cheating is not on our minds.

The hot springs are indeed hot. One can only stand the heat for less than a minute. However a mountain river passes right by, so on the bank where the spring water meets the river, the water is just in the right temperature. If you move more to the side of the bank, you get warmer water and if you move closer to the river then you can cool down. The river itself is very cold, but after heating up in the hot water it is perfect for a quick swim – a process that can be repeated.

We bathe here a while, have a quick lunch and then continue to Weiser – a town where we will stay tonight. The other 3 cars are already there after visiting another place of hot springs – Idaho is known to have lots of them. We stop in a Walmart for groceries, gas station for petrol and arrive in Weiser before sunset. Someone has an idea of swimming because the Snake river is very close by. Daumants leads us to the bank, but the colour of the water is not inviting in this place, so we decide to skip the swimming tonight. Later on a group of us find some geocaches, some others visit some activities of the town festival. Everyone is delighted about the possibility to sleep longer tomorrow – will only be leaving at 10:30.

When I asked an American friend what is Idaho famous for, I was said – potatoes. We didn’t check every field, but the car licence plates do confirm that locals are proud of this vegetable. However, for me Idaho will be the state of fountains. The agriculture here is so important that almost every field has long rows of water sprinklers working all around. Not fountains by design, but generally having the same effect.