Clean Up on Aisle 5

About 18 months ago, I stated playing with a trip plan, hoping to intentionally visit some counties that I'd never visited with my GPS in hand, and even more important, attend a couple major events in Seattle and Abbotsford, BC. Of course, we all know how that went. 

For the past couple years, I've picked away at California counties, including a bunch in Eastern California from my quick trip last summer and a small handful more just last month. Most of what is left is up the central corridor, the area that's typically our third choice for travel. That white area is enough to bug me into trying to clean them up.

In normal years, Oregon gets visited, but you can see the spots that have been ignored, primarily in the corners. There would have been another blank in the SE if it hadn't been for last year's quick trip.

As a Washington native with family ties to the state, I was a bit surprised to see how many counties I was still missing. I'm especially looking forward to getting some caches in San Juan county since I haven't been to the islands for years. Thanks to some other very interesting caches, I'm going to end up with a very circuitous route.

By the time I get finished cleaning up these three states, I should head directly home, but I have two more states where I've found caches in more than half the counties. There's certainly no straight route to getting the remaining 24 counties in Idaho, but I'll get to see lots of backroads and beautiful country in the process.

On last summer's trip I visited all the counties on the west side in Colorado. This summer, I'm hoping to finish up with the east side counties that I'm missing. With BJ's blessing, I'll take a couple extra days to visit the Colby, Kansas area as well, to drop some ink on the world's oldest existing geocache.

Eighteen months of planning and dreaming. There are nearly 1400 caches loaded in the GPS. The route totals about 8500 miles and I expect it to take 36 days. It will certainly be a great test of the Silver Subie's boondocking capabilities. I won't find all the caches I've loaded, but I expect to clean up the white spots in all five states.

Wheels should be rolling June 1st.

Jellystone

We had a beautiful day in store as we headed north out of Idaho Falls towards West Yellowstone. Rather than taking the highway the whole way, we turned off in Ashton to take the scenic route which rewarded us with our first (and last) view of the Tetons for this trip.

We did a short hike along an old rail line to the remains of a short tunnel on the mountain side above the Warm River.

Of course, there was a geocache involved, this one dating back to 2001. With the geocache found, logged, and replaced, we continued on towards West Yellowstone.

Our first stop was Bakers Hole campground about 3 miles north of town. We snagged one of the last sites (it's all first come, first served) at 2 p.m. After dropping the trailer, we headed out to wander around the area a bit.

I found the speed limit signs to be unique. This was posted along the main road, but it left me wondering if it only applied to snowmobiles, or expressly included them. I'm not sure who gets the duty to do radar enforcement of the snow mobiles.

Many of the motels in West Yellowstone had some sort of western theme and quite a few had neon signs. I don't think the Round Up was operating, but the Dude across the road was w elcom e (ing) guests. I don't know why they had the weird spacing in their Welcome sign.

First thing in the morning, we headed east, intending to transit the park. Almost immediately we encountered road maintenance in the form of striping in process. The signs were clear to stay off the fresh paint but the Cornhusker fan in front of us couldn't read, comprehend, or drive well enough to avoid the fresh paint. They were on the stripe more than they were off of it, but the white treads on the right rear tire did have a bit of designer style.

The clear, cool morning made the steam stand out.

We didn't see any bear, but we did see other wildlife of the four legged variety.

I wanted to stop for a picture at Fishing Bridge in part because there had been one in my parent's collection from the early 50's. Now there's No Fishing off the Fishing Bridge.

Maybe it was the weather that allowed for longer views, but I loved the area east of the park.

We routed through Cody because someone had mentioned a quilt shop in Cody in their blog. Cody was in the process of getting ready for their big rodeo the following weekend, and horse trailers were already gathering at the rodeo grounds.

Home for the night was a little RV park in Thermopolis, specifically so we could plug in the Air Conditioner. After a couple months of cool, often rainy, weather, we were suddenly starting to feel the heat.

Wind River Canyon was beautiful but difficult to drive because I wanted to watch the river that ran along the road most of the way.

We stopped at Hell's Half Acre to see what it was all about. Turns out, it was a miniature version of Brice, complete with hoodoos, but it's apparent claim to fame was that it was "Planet P" in the 1997 movie, Starship Troopers. As I understand it, 4 people saw the movie...

Our last overnight in Wyoming was the most expensive. Sierra Trading Post provides free overnight parking in their lot in Cheyenne, but who could resist a visit to their Outlet Store? Fun!