Going north for now

After a five month hiatus, we are on the road.  We had a great summer and I’ll blog a bit about that later.  But now I want to write about now.

We headed north from our home in Salt Lake City, pulling our shiny new-to-us tow car. Whose battery died after 100 miles.    

So we pulled off the road, detached the brake on the toad, pulled the lifeless car to the Riverside RV Park in Heyburn, Idaho, and called Triple A.  After a successful jump we settled in at a very pretty RV park. Then we explored Heyburn and nearby Burley.  Burley was named for a railroad official and has a population of about 10,000 people.  Heyburn has about 3,000 residents and was named for a former senator. Per Wikipedia, the region got a big economic boost when In 2012 Chobani opened the world's largest yogurt processing plant in nearby Twin Falls.

The next day we drove the car and the RV separately to Bruneau Dunes State Park near tiny Hammett, Idaho.  It was another lovely stop. 

Both days Jim did some research on our towing situation. Although our 2013 Honda CRV towed just fine when we did a test trip last month, apparently a fancier car needs a fancier brake set up.  So we'll work on that.

View of the Snake River from a bridge on US 30 and right next to the Heyburn Riverside RV Park.  What a great place to stay.  

Jim and Arlo on a path next to the RV park and along the Snake River.

Part of the path consisted of the Heyburn Arboretum, created about 12 years ago by the city and filled with 200 trees from all over the world -- including exotic ones like rubber trees that you wouldn't think could survive in southern Idaho.

Across the Snake River from Heyburn is the larger city of Burley, which is the county seat of Cassia County, Idaho.  Above is their very pretty courthouse.  When I first moved to Utah I heard a story on the news about "a Burley woman" and I thought "how rude."  But Burley is a well kept town and Burley women -- and men -- should be proud. 

People play on the big dune at Bruneau Dunes State Park, near Mountain Home, Idaho, and where we stayed the second night of our trip.  The big attraction is sand sledding; the park rents slides so people can cruise down the tallest (470 feet) single structure sand dune in North America.  Single structure means the sand hills are connected to one another instead of spread out.  Maddie and I climbed to the top of this one. 

View of our campground from the top of the dune.  At the right is a star gazing  observatory which we didn't visit as there was a full cloud cover the night we were there.

The pink and coral colored plants around the dunes were stunning. They looked soft and fuzzy but were actually hard and prickly -- but still beautiful.