Washed and waxed and ready to go!

On 23 June 2020, perhaps too much self-restricting pandemic lockdown (I say “self-restricting” as most of us in Eastern Idaho are not adhering to CoViD-19 lockdown, and even the local Sheriff departments refuse to enforce such things) forced me to hit the road for a scenic road-trip from Chubbuck to Bear Lake, Idaho, in my 2010 Dodge Challenger SRT-8.  I was accompanied by one of my daughters, Aryssa May Hutchins (who took 90% of the photos), and Andrew ‘Bulletproof Family Photos’ Erickson.

Aryssa says there’s plenty of room in the backseat.

No Crouching Tiger here.

Heading south.

Immediately I noticed how green everything is, especially since it’s the end of June.   Between 2011 and 2013 I drove courier routes all across Eastern Idaho, including to Montpelier near Bear Lake, and by June everything was bone dry and brown.  2012 was the year the south end of the city of Pocatello burned (June 2012: POCATELLO BURNING! EVACUATIONS! SOUTHEAST IDAHO BURNING! BANNOCK COUNTY BANS FIREWORKS, DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY!), it was a busy fire year.

A lot has changed since then; my children all became adults and moved away to the evil metro-ville called Boise, my house was paid-off the same year I lost my Mail Handler job at the U.S. Postal Service’s Gateway Station (I tried reapplying online as a Clerk but got an instant message saying I wasn’t ‘qualified’ to apply for that position) and apparently my age is keeping me from getting hired by any of the local employers I’ve applied at thus forcing me to live off my children’s ‘inheritance’ (ha, fortunately they’re all financially better-off than I was at their ages), my parents died which in turn forced me to realize I wasn’t getting any younger and I had not fulfilled one of my personal promises to acquire a muscle car (having sold-off my muscle car projects in the early 1980s due to the skyrocketing costs of becoming a spouse and parent) thus providence led me to a one-of-a kind (for Eastern Idaho) second-hand Dodge Challenger SRT-8 with 6-speed manual transmission and low mileage.  The original owner was forced to sell due to a back surgery that left her unable to engage the clutch pedal without pain.  Ironically she bought the Challenger brand new from the Dodge dealer in Pocatello for the same reasons I wanted to buy it; loss of relatives reminding her that she was not getting any younger, and reminiscing about her young adult days driving muscle cars in the 1970s (yes, many women owned and drove their own muscle cars back in the days when feminists were burning their bras for ‘equality’).

Cache National Forest

Face masks are mandatory!

U.S. National Forest Service’s Minnetonka Cave (aka Caverns), be careful, the steps and handrails in the cavern are wet and slick as ice.  Also, you better be in shape, there’s a lot of steep climbing and wearing the face-masks makes you feel like you’re going to suffocate.

Minnetonka supposedly means Falling Water, or Great Water.  There is a lot of water coming down inside the cave, through earthquake fault lines that run through the cave ceiling.

The tour guide tried to convince me that I was looking at Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Statue of Liberty?

Bring your neon-black light flash light, these rock are radioactive (high phosphorus content)!

They call it Stairway to Heaven, I calls it Stairway OF Hell!

Can you see the petrified Hypno-Toad?

Some bats were fluttering around, the tour guide seemed concerned.

I survived, but wait, this isn’t where I parked the car!

I always regret bringing a jacket, I end up soaked with sweat.  The cave is a constant 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 Celsius), but you wouldn’t know it because you overheat climbing up and down the very steep stairs.

There appears to be some faces in the rock-face of this outcrop above us.

Rock spirits of Minnetonka!

We hadn’t planned on going to Bear Lake but its bright blue water beckoned us as we came down off the mountain. We’re now suffering with solar induced radiation poisoning (sunburn), in other words we got fried.

“I gotta rock!”

Arriving at the North Beach of Bear Lake we discovered it was packed.  After paying the Idaho State Parks $5 parking fee at the gate on the west entrance, I drove all the way to the east end to find a parking spot.  Being Idahoans we counted license plates, one or two vehicles with Idaho plates, at least three with Oregon plates, at least 90% of the vehicles had Utah plates, I facetiously hope we don’t get sick with all those domestic foreigners around.   Most of the beach area was wall-to-wall people and despite ‘the age of CoViD-19’ nobody was wearing masks or ‘social distancing’, but what we should have done was protect ourselves from the Sun.

Gulliver goes renegade on the tiny Lilliputians!

Bear Lake’s North Beach is shallow, you can walk out for a while with the water getting no higher than your mid-thigh.  Some spots are soft sand while other areas are rocky.

Speaking of getting fried, we got hungry and headed back to a row of locally run tourist shops in the tiny town of Saint Charles, including North Beach Burgers that sells ‘gourmet’ burgers and shakes. I got the elk meat burger, Andrew got the bacon-black & blue-burger, Aryssa got the standard bacon cheeseburger, and we split a huckleberry shake.

Goes off every hour.

On the way back to Chubbuck we stopped in Soda Springs to refuel the car (it had just a little more than half a tank when we started the road-trip), and with The Fates on our side, hit the ‘captive’ (human-made) Geyser as it went off.

In the past I’ve seen people collecting this sulfur rich water for drinking purposes!

East Side

West Side

Close-up of wooden railing on the West Side of the geyser. Decades of mineralized overspray is petrifying the fence.

Soda Springs also claims to have Idaho’s oldest pharmacy, Eastman Drug, where we found this old 1950s era Mack firetruck.

Interstate-15 has a maximum passenger vehicle speed of 80 miles per hour (128 kilometers per hour) within Idaho, but once you take the Soda Springs turnoff the state highway speed is maxed at 65 mph (104 kph) with lots of drops to 35 and even 25 mph (56-40 kph) going through the many small towns along the way.  My 425 horsepower 6.1 Liter (372 cubic inches) hemi V8 managed to average 23 miles per gallon, something my early 1970s muscle car projects (with larger 6.2 L/383 ci and 7.2 L/440 ci motors pumping out less stock-factory horsepower) would be hard pressed to achieve even with the then 55 mph (88 kph) max speed limit on interstates, back then.

Photo of my dad with my Canadian built 1971 Plymouth Satellite Sebring Plus, 383 ci V8 with 3-speed automatic transmission, circa 1983-84.

Don’t let CoViD-19 get you down, get out and drive!

August 2017: POCATELLO AIRPORT FIRE BOMBERS ARE BACK!

More Economic Decline: COVID-19 SHUTDOWN 24HRS WINCO?

Bannock County’s ROAD TO NOWHERE

Bannock County’s WHITE ELEPHANT

A History Lesson in Economic Decline: POCATELLO’S OLD FRED MEYER & ALBERTSONS ON YELLOWSTONE AVE, DID NOT CLOSE DOWN IN THE 1990S

Road Trip 2011: ANCIENT NUCLEAR POWERED JET ENGINE FOUND IN IDAHO DESERT, PROOF OF ANCIENT ALIEN VISITORS?