Jiggling Jello.......

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6:55 am - Saturday - October 14th - Ririe, ID - 31º F, humidity 80%, wind 7 mph out of the northwest.......there is NO wind whatsoever, but it is has been, and is currently snowing.....about 5" of snow on the ground as I write......

Looks to be about 5" and still accumulating

What a difference a night makes

......wait, what?  There was nothing in last night's forecast about snow......but, come on.....how cool is it to awake to a winter wonderland?!  And, then, of course, there were the Jello plans we had to move further south today......and then the Jello jiggled.  Just another reminder that we need to move south a little more quickly.

So, back to Friday's shenanigans......originally we had talked about driving into Idaho Falls Friday to do a little 'junking', possibly see a movie, and then have an early dinner at a local micro brewery we have frequented in the past, but as the morning wore on we decided to just stay home and enjoy not doing anything, or imposing any kind of a schedule upon our persons.  Another compelling reason for not going anywhere was the relentless winds which were in the mid to high 20 mph all day long with gusts into the 30's on a regular basis.  And, finally, there were about 10-15 recorded shows in our DVR queue (NCIS, NCIS L.A., Blacklist, Designated Survivor, Survior, Gold Rush, Last Ship, NCIS New Orleans, etc.) which we needed to whittle down a tad.

Of course, there also had to be a walk around the campground, and around 3 pm we did just that.......

 Yup, it is cold!

.....it was still in the low 40's, and adding in the windchill factor I would say it felt like the mid 30's, so we bundled up against the cold and walked for about 40 minutes taking a few pictures to memorialize our visit before retreating to the heated comfort of the Newell.

There was another very good MLB ALCS playoff game pitting the hated New York Yankees against the Houston Astros......it was a well pitched game with Houston prevailing 2-1 in a game which could have gone either way.

Back to the present (7:41 am, Saturday), waking up to 5" of snow on the ground reminds me of how well built Newells are......well insulated, heated water bay, electric heaters, gas heaters, chassis heaters.....they are definitely 4 season coaches.  We have plenty of propane, we have 50 amp electric service (really 100 amps), and we have no schedule to keep.  We may, or may not roll our wheels today.  Oh, and one more thing.....it has stopped snowing, so we've got that going for us!

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The 'IT' factor......

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8:34 am - Friday - October 13 - Ririe, ID - 34º F, humidity 53%, wind 9 mph out of the south by southeast.......when you see windmills on the hill near your camp there is no way it is not going to be windy, right?

We awoke, finally, to a windless environment Friday morning.  I haven't talked a lot about the the wind, but over time wind kind of wears me down.   Any day I wake up without the ubiquitous sound of the wind makes me happy.  Our original Jello plan was to continue south from Dillon, MT on I-15 to Idaho Falls which is always a natural stop off point for us when traveling the I-15 corridor.  Sometimes we have stayed at a local in town RV park, or in the local Walmart parking lot.  As I was thinking Thursday night about where we might stay my mind kept rejecting these familiar options so I began to look outside of town for someplace new to stay for a couple of days.  I checked Freecampsites.net and found numerous free boondocking options, of which there are many in this area, but knowing the overnight lows would be in the very low 20's I began to look to places where we could at least have access to electricity.  Initially I thought we might stay at the local Elks Lodge, but they only offer 20 amp service with no water, or sewer, or dump station.  The price, $10/night, was attractive, but I really didn't want to be back in a situation where we had to think about what electric appliances we could use.....we did that all summer and, frankly, I'm over that.  I just want to plug in and not have to manage our electrical consumption, especially with the cold temps being forecast.  I checked Passport America, but none of the parks nearby had that 'IT' factor, even at a 50% discounted rate.  Finally I checked RV Park reviews dot com and found this cool out of the way Bonneville County Park which overlooks Ririe Dam/Reservoir.  This park seemed to have the 'IT' factor, so that is where we headed about mid morning.

We had one big pass, Monida (6,870' elevation), which stood between us and the Idaho border.  Fortunately the grade heading up to the pass is quite gentle and I was able to keep the Newell in cruise control the entire time.....that is rare......95% of the time I have to shift down to 2nd, or 3rd gear to get over most passes, or summits.  Our total driving distance for the day was modest......just 146 miles.  Normally I would take time before we leave a location to clean the windshield, but it was soooo cold I decided to put it off until we got down the road aways.  About 45 miles into our day I spotted a rest stop near Lima, MT which we had stopped at previously, so we pulled in and I spent the next 15 minutes cleaning the windshield and side windows......it was still quite cold!

We exited I-15 about 10 miles shy of Idaho Falls and took a few country roads over to US-26 which took us the final 6 miles to Juniper Campground, which is aptly named as there are juniper bushes everywhere.......

.......as we entered the park around 2 pm it was obvious that we would be the only ones there.....we essentially have the entire park to ourselves!  Most of the sites are long pull throughs so it was just a matter of finding one with the 'IT' factor, and then settling in for two days.  Since the overnight temps are getting below freezing most nights the water has been turned off.....that's cool as we had over 100 gallons of fresh water still left in our tank.....more than enough for two days.  At least we have access to the sewer to dump our gray tank water, and we have 50 amp service!

Around 7 pm we noticed we were getting a great sunset.......unfortunately, my meager photographic skills did not capture its true grandeur, and beauty......

.....we spent most of the evening watching the MLB game five between the Chicago Cubs and the Washington Nationals.....the game lasted over 4.5 hours and was ultimately won by Chicago 9-8.....the Nationals just made too many errors in a game they should have won handily.

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HEADING FOR VENTURA TOMORROW....

Getting ready to head for Ventura tomorrow morning. We hope to get a spot on Rincon Parkway, or in one of the County run RV parks on either end of the Parkway (Faria, or Hobson). No telling what we will find....it's still early Fall, and sometimes you have to arrive there on Wednesday to get a spot, especially on a holiday weekend (Columbus Day is next Monday). We have never tried to snag a spot on Rincon Parkway this early in the Fall, so this will be a new adventure. If we have to, we will spend the days and early evenings parked along the parkway in the "day use" areas, and then retreat to somewhere in town where there are large parking lots. We will scope the possiblities on the way into town for our night camps.