Vacation Day 1 - Driving and the Pickle

When Stacie finally got back after her 11-week fellowship, we decided to take a vacation together before she started classes again. We borrowed my parents pop-up camper and hit the road for Craters of the Moon National Monument, Yellowstone National Park, and Grand Teton National Park.

After getting up at 5am, we finally got out the door at 6:30. No matter how well packed and "ready" we are the night before, we never manage to leave in less than an hour. On our way through Loveland we stopped at McDonalds to fuel up and then headed north. We made our way through Fort Collins and started up highway 287 north to Laramie, WY. This stretch of highway is well known for being steep, winding, and most of all WINDY. It lived up to its reputation, as did the rest of I-80 through Wyoming. Between the constant 30mph headwind, the steep grades, and the camper behind us our truck was averaging an H2-esque 10 miles per gallon. This wasn’t the most picturesque part of Wyoming, so these seven hours or so was very slow. Eventually we made it through to Utah, where the scenery improved and the drive got a bit easier. We were only in Utah for a short while before crossing in to Idaho, and we only stopped once, getting gas in the northern part of the state off of I-15. Once we crossed into Idaho it felt like we were finally on the home stretch, but we still had several hours to go.

We finally pulled in to Mountain View RV Park at about 6:30pm, twelve hours after we left. We had read good reviews of the place back home, so we had high expectations. We ended up in a spot right up by the office, a very short walk from the bathrooms and close enough for the wifi to work well. The site was plenty big enough for us, pretty level, had good thick grass, shade trees and a picnic table. The bathrooms were outstanding – clean, well designed, free showers (each in their own private room), etc. Overall our first RVing experience was starting out great. We got the camper set up and all the hookups in place and then headed out to get some dinner.

On the way in I had spotted “The Pickle’s Place”, a small building on the side of the highway painted green with a flashing EAT neon on the roof. This seemed like a perfect local dive to try out, so we headed straight over. Once inside, it did not disappoint: it had the exact small town feel we expected, from the casual attitude to the local posters (some hand written) with advertisements ranging from local businesses to the county fair. I had the “Atomic Burger”, which was nothing more than a standard burger off the grill with Jalapeño peppers on it. However, the meat was fresh, from a local supplier, and the onion rings were great.

After dinner we took a quick drive around to get a feel for the rest of the area. It turned out that Arco really is a small town (population 1026); we were hoping to find some sort of general store to pick up a few things we forgot, but we struck out. Once we exhausted the possibilities of Arco, we drove down the road to Craters of the Moon National Monument to see how far away it was and get a first look at it. It was deep dusk when we got there, so we weren’t able to see much, but we saw enough to get us excited about coming back the next day.