Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Yellowstone Road Trip - Day 21

“Last night I walked to the river bank . . .the clouds reflected in the water were beautiful and the sagebrush on the plain was red with the sun. I cried and prayed to God while gazing at the setting sun” ~Louis Fiset, Minidoka Internee

“They've sunk in posts deep into the ground
They've strung out wires all the way around
With machine gun nests just over there
And sentries and soldiers everywhere."
From a poem entitled Damned Fences by Minidoka internee Jim Yoshihara

By 7:45 we were on the road again – headed southwest out of Arco, Idaho on Hwy 20/26/93 towards Elko, Nevada. Using John's phone GPS (Margie), since Wilma seems to be on strike, he located a Starbucks only 42 miles away in Hailey. But when Linda consulted her atlas it showed that it would be 44 miles out of the way. John didn't want to go that far so it has now been proven that he does have a Starbucks Limit.

We traveled through lots of farm and ranch areas – miles and miles of fields of alfalfa and sugar beets. We were looking to find some potatoes growing but only found one by the side of the road next to a sugar beet crop. They seem to have lots of irrigation water available from the Snake River Plain.

As we pulled into Shoshoni we found a cute drive-through coffee place and got welcomed into town by a nice mural on a downtown wall of an old building (see photo gallery). And, Linda got her non-fat decaf latter with one Splenda, while John got a medium non-fat mocha with half the chocolate and and extra espresso shot. Neither got whip cream.

South of Shoshone we took Hwy 25 east to go to the Minidoka Internment National Monument on Hunt Road . It is known as Idaho's largest ghost town – a 950-acre camp where ten thousand Americans of Japanese descent were held as prisoners during World War II from August 16,1942 to October 26, 1945. Most internees were US-born citizens loyal to the principles and values of this country. They were taken from their homes in California, Washington and Oregon and denied their civil, constitutional and human rights. They were no longer free. The main buildings standing are portions of the guard stations at the entry. Visitors can tour the grounds and see where the various other buildings were located. Barbed wire serves as a grim reminder that it was a prison. There is a large plaque honoring the more than 1000 young people, from the camp, who served in our military and the names of the 73 who died are also on a plaque. It says “For our tomorrow, they gave their today.” For more information on this shameful chapter in America's history just google Minidoka Internment or Minidoka Relocation Center at Hunt, Idaho. (For you mileage madness players, you should add about 18 to 20 miles to today's route for our trip to this national monument).

We were soon back onto Hwy 93 after briefly being on Highway 74 south. From Twin Falls we went 41 miles before getting to Nevada where the casinos sprout up right away at Jackpot, Nevada in the northeastern part of the state. We stopped at a convenience store for a rest stop and to get Diet Durpers to go with our picnic lunch. Their restrooms were in the attached casino but you had to make your way past a lot of slot machines to find them. Linda was going to put a quarter in one on the way out but the ones she saw all were $1.00. “Oh, well, I needed that quarter for road trip laundry anyway,” she consoled herself. John had the same thought only he was going to be a really big spender with his 5 quarters. But he discovered that none would take quarters. You had to have a cash ticket, or bills. Oh, well, they didn't need our paltry contribution anyway, and we came out ahead! And rested!

Just past Jackpot we found a pleasant picnic area by Salmon Creek and had our durpers, sandwiches and chips. John is getting to be quite an expert sandwich maker. He prepares the sandwiches while Linda takes Fannie for her early morning walk. Linda added some extra greenery to hers that she procured during her investigation of the sugar beet crop (to see what they were). John warned of agricultural pesticides, but she didn't care. Said they were delicious!

At Wells, Nevada we changed drivers and got off Hwy 93 and onto Interstate 80 to Elko. By 2:30 we arrived at our Motel 6. Our room wasn't ready yet so we went to an Albertson's for sandwich supplies and went by a park to let Fannie Mae walk a bit. Our M6 room was nice. Wifi worked great for uploading photo gallery, but was uncooperative when it came to uploading the videos.

Our dinner decision was easy – pizza – since we haven't had any since the last time we worked at Tuesday Night Bingo in Morgan Hill on August 14th. Hawaiian pizza from the concession stand has become our regular Tuesday dinner. Based on recommendations from some people at the park, we chose to go to Pizza Barn (a family-owned restaurant) rather than to Pizza Hut or Domino's. John got the Pizza Barn Special (5 cheeses, mushrooms, black olives, linguica, ground beef, sausage, red onions and green bell peppers and a Icky beer. The sign on the wall said, "Our beer isn't yucky, it's Icky!" 1200 calories for 2/3 of the 10" pizza and 150 calories for the beer. Linda got a veggie hot sack sandwich so that she wouldn't have leftovers and an award-winning Ruby Mountain local ale. Her hot pocket came with a package of Lay's potato chips so she asked if they had any other kinds of chips. They said “How about a small salad instead?” Perfect. Both old buzzards had leftovers so it may be Pizza Barn leftovers for lunch on the road tomorrow. Of course, there's always Wilma's microwave (the radiator)!

There are 44 photos in today's photo gallery and you can view every one of them by clicking here.

Thanks for all your positive comments. Glad you are enjoying being on our road trip with us. As we enter our last week we are making a list of things it would be nice to include on our packing list for our next adventure. Sorry it has been so hard for some of you to post comments. We will try to work on the settings before our next trip, or at least include some additional instructions in the Official Old Buzzards Road Trip Tutorial. We do appreciate and enjoy your comments.

Some Mileage Madness players go to extremes to calculate their estimate of our mileage. Don't let that discourage you from entering. Our suggestions is make a wild guess between 2,000 and 20,000. Heck, you could land right on it. You have until midnight Monday, September 30th to email your entry to mileagemadness@buzzardbiat.org.

Happy trails! We can hardly wait to see what awaits us at The Clown Motel tomorrow.

3 comments:

  1. I've had an Icky before! At the source in Moab, Utah. With a name like Icky . . .

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  2. Wouldn't it be interesting if the TV huckster, Vince, who sells the famous "Schticky" combined commercials for the Schticky and Icky beer.

    "Be sure to drink your Icky while you clean with your Schticky!"

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  3. Have you ever googled "Durper"?

    Urban Dictionary definition...

    Durper: One who is utterly stupid in every way possible, "wow, what a durper"

    So, I guess a "diet durper" is only stupid in most ways possible?

    ReplyDelete