The Longest Day (MCV)

Today we drove from Idaho Falls, Idaho to Reno, Nevada, almost 1000km... a very long day. I must say, though, Idaho redeemed itself this morning. As it turns out, Idaho has tons of mountains, the interstate just happens to drive right through the flatest part of Idaho. But it gets better: this flat area is flat because it's actually a gigantic volcanic lava flow, probably related to the same hot spot as Yellowstone! In some places (the boring ones) soil has been blown onto the old lava so it's really great for farming, but in other places (the neat ones) you can see 'fresh' lava (basalt for the geos) with sagebrush and alligator juniper growing in the rock blocks. It was so neat! Along the Snake river valley we often encountered deeply incised valleys, with vertical walls of basalt flows. At Twin Falls, right before turning south to Nevada, we stopped at the edge of the Snake river to watch people base jumping off the bridge! Wow, it was incredible, but you would not catch me ever doing that! And all the while, there were snow capped mountains always visible on the horizon, so I guess there ARE mountains in Idaho! Heading south to Nevada we drove down through amazing weathering formations, always with mountains visible on every horizon. Nevada also has a lot more mountains and passes than I remember. It was a more interesting drive than I had been expecting, mostly with some mountain ranges in the distance in all directions and sage brush desert in foreground. Not much to do in Nevada, nor is the scenery very variable, but the ranges come and go and each is slightly different from the others. This area really is big sky country because the lack of anything that grows higher than 3 feet makes it possible to see for 10's of km and see the detail of all the geology going on around us. Tilted sedementary rocks, volcanics, sediments, and one river: the Humboldt. Coming to the end of the Humboldt (it simply dies in a puddle of brackish water in the middle of the desert) was really neat, since there are so few rivers that don't eventually lead to the ocean. Joel added interest to the drive by showing up after a gas stop in Elko (gas was 4.05/gallon for the record) with a fried pie (those of you from the SW will know what those are) and the world's biggest cup of Dr. Pepper: 44 ounces of insanity! It was a combined effort getting that thing to him everytime he wanted a sip! But I can't complain, I haven't had to drive the entire trip. Sometime after the end of the Humboldt we were deep into salt flats and sagebrush desert when the air got really thick and the sun went away. The only thing we can imagine it was was dust in the air! How bizarre, and we weren't quite sure until it started raining and the rain actually made our car dirty! It was raining mud! Eventually the mud rain turned to real rain and all was right again, but I'll never forget the mud rain. We drove with rain the last few miles through a pass into Reno where we began our nightly search for the 'hotel zone by the highway'... yeah... not in Reno. I guess because there are so many hotels here, the usual Comfort Inn and Best Western at the outskirt of town near the highway does not exist. We finally just headed to the airport and took a hotel room here. Funny, it's the cheapest hotel room we've had all trip, and it's Best Western. Go figure. For future reference: Reno is not a good place to stop and stay the night on your way somewhere else.

And that's it for today. Tomorrow we only have a little over three hours to get to Walnut Creek and the next stage of our adventure begins!