Idaho

I wonder if it is cheating to use a song written by someone specifically to celebrate a road trip, rather than a famous song? Still I don't think there are any rules so here is Idaho, a song by Jeff Ingerle. The images in the video are excellent photos, so do watch as well as listen. The alternative was the state song, Here we have Idaho, but I didn't think it captures that state as well as Ingerle does.

The morning began in the Comfort Inn, Bozeman. After naming and uploading all 170 of yesterday's photos and completing a blog post on our last night in Deadwood I showered and shaved before going down for breakfast. 

As ever the Comfort Inn breakfast was of a really good standard. Sausage and scrambled egg with toast was my choice, while Drew had the sausage and egg and three nut muffins. Drew however found breakfast a bit of a struggle. Here is how he tells it:

<<Co-pilots note: I am not an inpatient kind of fella, but if there one thing I cannot abide its slow moving people. Especially when said slow moving people occupy the whole width of the street / corridor, moving at the pace at which a snail would look back and say: "so long suckers!", but on the way to breakfast we had 2 such slow movers. No number of coughs splutterings or mutterings would get the buggers to make way.

Eventually we reached the breakfast, and said slow movers made enough room for us to get by, and sneak our way past them into the breakfast room. The following 15 minutes were hellish. First of all, they could not get the plates to separate, it took a hotel employee to help them! .

Then after a few minutes "I sure would like some coffee". "Do they do coffee" "they must do because people are drinking coffee" "where do they get the coffee" "I don't know but they must do coffee because people are drinking coffee" "I sure would like a coffee". Cue more assistance from hotel employee.

A few more minutes pass. "I sure would like some eggs". "They do eggs, that fella over there, he was eggs". " are you sure they are eggs" "yep" "they don't look like eggs to me" "yep they are eggs""where do they get the eggs" "I don't know, but I sure would like some eggs".

At which point, said man, who was quietly trying to eat his eggs got up, opened up the big silver egg storage thing pointed and said "the eggs are in here", to which the response came "are you sure".

Is it any wonder I'm in the state I am!!!!!>>

We left the hotel at 8.30 for our trip down (and it is almost due south) to Salt Lake City Utah. Here is the map:

For a fuller version of the map click here

Again choosing the scenic, not the fastest route for the start of our journey we headed to  the US-191, a scenic highway, which goes down the Gallatin Valley skirting the edge of Yellowstone National Park. This is a very picturesque area with the river cutting a deep gorge between the mountains. The river itself was bright and bubbling along, the hills were sharp and craggy, the trees climbed the hills and grew in places you wouldn't expect to see a tree. The photos of this part of the journey are here.  

The 191 ends at West Yellowstone, one of the gates to the park, as mentioned earlier in one of Drew's pieces on the blog we are not visiting the park as given my history on recent holidays (an ash cloud and two hurricanes) Drew is afraid that the big volcano under Yellowstone would choose to blow if we go there.

From West Yellowstone we headed along the 20 to the Idaho state line. I need to offer apologies here to my sister. Four years ago, to make sure I got to Idaho, not knowing we would be back, I arranged a three hour detour to get into the state in wet weather. all to no avail as here we are now in glorious sunshine with the temperature at 92 travelling 188 miles over 3 hours through the state.

Idaho is interesting in that it straddles the mountains and the plains. Initially the panorama is not much different from Montana, then within a mile you come from the hills and mountains to a fertile plain with lots of farming. 

For lunch we stopped at a little roadside cafe in the tiny village of Henry's Fork Landing. It was called the Henry's Fork Landing Cafe. We opted to have something more like a second breakfast for lunch with Drew opting for a Spanish Omelette and I for Sausage and two eggs. Both were served with hash browns and toast, rye for me, white for Drew. With his toast Drew had two different home-made jams. One raspberry, one strawberry, he preferred the strawberry as it was more tart than the raspberry. 

Within 30 miles of leaving the cafe the road became dual-carriageway and 25 miles after that became the I-15 which we followed all the way to Salt Lake City crossing into Utah at just before 3pm. Utah being Drew's 13th (and last) new state of this holiday. It means he has 8 left to do for his own 48:

• Pennsylvania
• Ohio
• Indiana
• Michigan
• Illinois
• Wisconsin
• Missouri
• Colorado

Sounds like a good trip, I guess it will be time for some planning for 2014 when we get back home :-)

On coming into Utah we stopped for a coffee and changed drivers. Soon after the I-15 started to get busy. With a number of large towns (Brigham City, Ogden and Layton) along the way meaning the road became five or six lanes at times. So photos stopped as I made sure we were in the correct lane. With exits on the left as well as the right in the US it is not as easy to stay in the right lane as it is in the UK where all the exits are on one side. But we managed it safely, and with only two turns off the interstate we arrived at the Comfort Inn, Downtown Salt Lake City at West Temple and 500 South at 5 pm.