Road Trip - Rexburg

We'd been reading about how early the campsites in Yellowstone fill up each morning, so decided that to make sure we found a site we'd want to arrive there really early in the morning. To enable that, we decided to stay a night in a motel in a little town just south of the park called Rexburg. The road from Boise to Rexburg was long and straight, taking us through never-ending miles of farmland. Katie and I took turns driving, an hour each. We've found this is an excellent way to ensure neither of us gets burned out, and still have enough energy to do things once we've finished driving for the day.

We finally found some reprieve from the monotonous flatness when we came to Shoshone Falls, in the Snake River Canyon. The canyon is just a massive crack in the landscape, going from perfectly flat to a near-vertical drop-off. We drove down into the canyon to have a look at the falls, which were quite impressive. In the carpark, we saw lots of people in bathing suits, but couldn't see any way to actually get down to the river. Eventually, we worked out that they were just cooling off in the sprinklers watering the grass!

As we pulled into town, Anders started complaining that he was getting low on oil. Uh-oh! I checked the dipstick which showed the level sitting right at the 'low' mark, so we made a quick stop at Autozone to buy a quart of synthetic 5w-30. After we checked in to the motel, I went back out into the carpark and drove the car up onto a paving stone so that I could peek underneath. On the way to Rexburg, we'd driven through a wind storm which had blown huge big tumbleweed-like plants across the road, one of which we'd hit full on. I didn't think it was solid enough to cause us any problems, but the sudden lack of oil had me worried. I scooted underneath the car and noticed that the bottom of the sump was damp with oil. It was coming from somewhere higher up the engine but didn't look like it was a serious problem, more like a very slow leak.

We went for dinner at a local restaurant called The Hickory, which specialised in a variety of slow-cooked meats and huge mason jars of home-made flavoured lemonade. Our server chatted to us for a while, and we learned that Rexburg is a university town with a tiny resident population. We did some more research after our meal and discovered that the local university (Brigham Young University) is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormon Church. Recent estimates suggest that 95% of Rexburg's population is a member of the LDS Church.

During dinner, we got confirmation of the dates that my work wanted me to be in San Francisco for. While we were in Emigrant Springs, they let me know that there was the possibility of me going there to cover for their IT guy who is on holiday, but nobody was sure of the timing. They finally decided that they'd like me there for the week of the 13th to the 17th. Back at the motel, we spent several hours researching hotels and booking flights. We plan to spend 6 nights in Yellowstone, one night in Casper (a little town halfway between the park and Denver), one night by Denver Airport, and then fly to San Francisco for a week. With everything organised, we went to bed at about midnight, dreading the 3am alarm set for the next morning.