After getting up to a wonderful breakfast of huckleberry pancakes (Tami had great fun

Beautiful huckleberries

picking huckleberry’s the day before, though she was disappointed she couldn’t pick them ALL), we left early for a LONG day of driving.

With Peggy and the dusty M

It was hard to say goodbye to Peggy and Don, but we had to press on down the road in our now very dusty M. It was approximately 600 miles from Peggy’s place in Idaho to Ogden, Utah, with the first half of the drive on minor side highways.

Tami was frustrated with the slow drivers on the back roads, but the slower speeds did get our gas mileage up to 30 miles per gallon, compared to the 21 we averaged later on the freeway. The gradually  winding descent out of the Idaho mountains was quite glorious in the M, however, with the curves all perfectly banked and the grade just right so very little braking was required.

We were puzzled, however, how they make water run uphill in Idaho. As we drove along the Salmon River, we felt that we were descending down the canyon, yet the river seemed to be flowing up the canyon. We even saw many rafters heading up the river. How does that work???

We intended to lunch in McCall, Idaho, a sleepy little town on a lake that Tami remembered from her childhood.  Apparently there was an old lodge there that she and her sister ran wild in.  Well, McCall is sleepy no longer.  The area reminded us most of North Lake Tahoe.  It is an outdoor and water sports mecca, with all the tourist traps, crowds, and traffic jams that implies.  We gave up even looking for parking and drove straight through and out the other side.

We did finally find lunch at a smaller town down the road called Cascade.  And we got lucky, finding a wonderful road side BBQ pit, the Redneck Diner, with tables on the lawn, smoker on the deck, and some of the best ribs we’ve had in quite a while.  We left there happy.

The Redneck Diner

After we made it to Boise, we put the top down (it’s generally too cold in the mornings), and got on the freeway headed East.  At the same time, we kept a worried eye on the sky as the cloud bank ahead of us was very dark.  We did get under some clouds which provided some cool relief, but the darkness continued to stay ahead of us.  We chased the rain for over a hundred miles before catching a few minutes worth.

A hastily taken picture of looming storm clouds

Outside our hotel, looking down 25th St

We did confirm that if you drive fast enough in a convertible when it is raining, you don’t really get wet. It was only after we had gassed up and turned south towards Utah that we finally caught up with serious rain and saw lightening in the distance, so we had to put the top up.  It got quite wet and stormy then, with lightening all around us.  We managed to get through the storm a bit before Ogden.

In Ogden we checked into the classic old hotel in the middle of town, the Ben Lomond.  For dinner we headed out into the old red light district, 25^th Street, now turned into the night life center, and had dinner at a brewery and restaurant called Roosters.  After a day on the road our eyes were bigger than our stomachs and we ordered more yummies than we could really handle. Back in our room, we just managed to catch the highlights of the day’s stage of the Tour de France before collapsing in bed.