2003 07 Nevada, Idaho

Well, I have been messing up my dates.  Today is the 29th.  Today is Tuesday.  Today is both the 29th and Tuesday.

Today I drove from Elko Nevada to Mountain Home Idaho.  This is more or less straight north.. and goes from Pacific to Mountain time, which was odd.

The drive goes through some of the emptiest country in the 48 states, I think.  Northwest Nevada, southern Idaho, and eastern Oregon are all sage and all high up.  Really hot in the summer and cold in the winter.  From Elko you head north across sage and rolling hills and get into the Owyhee River canyon, which is beautiful.  Here are a few shots of that.

The above was taken just below the Wild Horse Dam.  The next is a mile or two further north.

I love these roadcuts.  Lots of cool abstract and colorful stuff going on in them.  I took a bunch of a roadcut on Nevada US 50 that some of you have seen.

This guy was standing in the middle of the road looking at me.  He eventually ambled off.  He's either not wild or so wild he's not afraid of people.  There were no ranches for miles ..

When you get away from the river and near the Idaho border you're out on the steppes ..

This is interesting..  and weird .. a very substantial bridge that literally leads nowhere..

So finally we are at the Bruneau Dunes.  There is a small irregular lake in among the dunes:

That dune out there is tall - close to 500 feet, I think. 

This part of Idaho has something in common with much of the west, it seems.  There is a large AF base here, Mountain Home Air Force Base, so there are F15s and who knows what all else whistling around much of the time.  They also have their own little bombing range controversy, just like many parts of Nevada.  the AF has a range near here, but they want more space to blow up stuff.  That is being reisisted, so the AF has to fly into Nevada to drop bombs on stuff there.

Since it is late July and this is Idaho and it is really hot, we know that someplace there must be a huge fire.  Sure enough:

This fire is way off in the northern part of the state.  The smoke was much more visible when the sun was very low like this.

One interesting thing about this park is that there is an astronomical observatory here.  The round building with the sloping roof has a 25" telescope.

I guess that's all for now.  It's Wednesday about 11:30 here, and I am off for a mid day drive.  I was out on the dunes this morning before dawn and stayed about 3 hours.  I got out of there when it started to get hot - record highs are predicted for today, and I think that means around 105 again.  In the morning it was cool, about 60, and last evening was OK too, about 80 or 85 .. will go back out on the dunes again tonight.