"This is pretty flat," says John a few seconds after he asked me to flick him in the ear..."Flick you in the ear?, I question. "Yep! To keep me awake."
About now, after a Sam's run for final supplies before entering The Deep Dark Woods, and after two Sam's pizzas chugged down with 1 cup of Coke Zero, refilled 6 times, the kids are plugged into their respective electronics for their half hour shift.
Johnny starts a conversation, "He guys, did you know that the Winter Olymipics happen in less than a year?" "Oh no!", the girls rejoin. He goes on to tell them it's in Winter 2014. "Oh! Neat!" "Do they have an opening cermony? Is it just as important?"
Jamaican bob-sledders receive some attention, along with the fact that they're importing snow for the event....(could be true)
On, and on we drive, through potato and beet fields, through stunted corn ("It'd be 4 ft tall in SC",John says, with pride. Baby wheat, a foot tall, stretches over the rolling fields towards hideous windmill farms. An irrigation spray cools the skin of our steady van and washes some hardened bugs from the windshield.
Questions arise, "How do those things move?" (See the irrigation sprinkler below)
How do you keep the weeds down?
Why do they (farmers) do this?
Ben pipes up that "I didn't jump over the water thingy"....he's playing Temple Run...."I'm beating you monster!! I didn't jump on the bridge...."(Is he really two??)
Kirsten threatens to take Luke's game away if he doesn't shape up....
We discuss that the Tetons are part of the Rockies, and that Lassen is in the Cascades.
Within minutes of our Sam's trip, about 20 min, John is eating an apple, sweet, to wash down pizza. I guess it's better that he's eating than having me flick his ear! The landscape has gotten steadily hillier. Soon we'll be in low mountains, for this rolling farm land is actually foothills.
This is beautiful country, over here....I know it is heavily irrigated, and Twin Falls, ID is considered teh dessert, but it doesn't look like one here. The blazing heat, about 100 degrees today, rivals anything SC has to scald us with. They say it is unseasonable hot.....right!!
Before our well planned stop at Sam's Club in Idaho Falls, we made an emergency "pit stop" at a Shoshone Bannock Tribe owned and operated gas station/convenience store. We dashed in only to find the bathroom was being cleaned....ohhh, ooooo!! Sensing the urgency, the Shoshone worker, with a caution about the damp floor, quickly reopened the restroom allowing all the squirmy waiting in line women entrance. "Ahhhh!"
The Shoshone were tall. statuesque. Beautiful people, with gentle spirits. I could tell that. The worker told me that he lived on the reservation. "It's different over there." "What do you mean?" "They don't sell alcohol or tobacco", he says mildly. I tell him that in NM, Navajo country, billboards line the highway warning about drunk driving, a huge problem among the natives. I shake his hand, feeling one with my country and its people. Am I an elitist? Perhaps. But this human interaction is the best I can do... I feel a longing. Is that God's unity calling me into the depths of the Trinity?
All's quiet. The electronic switch has been made in peace.
John muses about the Snake River. "It sure is green..." I snap multiple pictures, trying to capture the essence of this paradise. But I fail to digitalize my memory, and miss some photos of fishermen protected by floppy hats, standing in rowboats casting their line.
Brian says, "Skunk!" AGAIN. "Anna's perfume!' Kirsten jokes, AGAIN!
And on we go, toward the Tetons and Yellowstone!
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In reverse order, that is east to west our journey from Idaho Falls (Land of Sam's samples) towards The Tetons (Land of wildflowers sun-bathing among slender evergreens piercing the blue, welcoming sunbeams to their land.
The mountains, a 50 min drive from Idaho Falls' flatlands.
Farmsteads nestle in the rolling fields.
The Snake River
Irrigation sprinkler
Flatter farmland.
Yellow flowered crop. What is it???
was seen as we approach from the west for over a hundred miles!!!
