Idaho - Day 14 - to Pocatello

Pocatello KOA, Pocatello

Thursday, 14 July 2022

today's route from Idaho Falls

Before we left Idaho Falls, I took Dext once more to the walking trail along the falls.  There seemed to be a lot for him to sniff, and it was very pleasant for me.  I've noticed that he's getting much better about meeting other dogs, and that the only real problems come when the other dogs are growling, or at least aren't wagging their tails.  So friendly dogs get met by a friendly Dexter, which is a real improvement over how he used to be.  Things are really different without Gracie.

On the road, I passed a Budweiser plant, and at Shelley, pop. 4,586, I passed a large Basic American Foods facility.  I don't remember coming across that brand before, but online I learned that it's "family owned and operated since 1933," and it's a "global leader in providing value added, shelf-stable potato and bean products to foodservice and retail."  So there.  Except I also learned that that plant in Shelley had probably already shut down.  The company had scheduled it for closure in 2019, even before the pandemic, and also closing their plant down the road in Blackfoot.  Must have been a blow to the job situation in this area.

Litter pickup in this area was sponsored by "UShould2."  Not having heard of that, I looked it up and am not sure I'm any wiser.  A decade ago, a group of teenagers in Philadelphia started a program called "I Know U Should 2," which was aimed at getting kids to get themselves tested for sexually transmitted diseases.  They'd learned that teens in Philly had STDs at 5 times the national average rate, and that STDs can have lifelong effects, including cutting that life quite short.  The only other information I could find was stuff I couldn't access because I don't have an account with Twitter or Instagram or any of that, so I don't know if this litter crew was piggybacking on that other effort or was something separate.

I stopped at the post office in Blackfoot, pop. 11,899, to pick up some General Delivery mail David sent me.  I asked the folks there about a park where I could walk my dog and was given very clear directions to a local off-leash dog park, so we went.  I'm sorry to report that it was a very unpleasant experience because apparently nobody in Blackfoot picks up after their dogs.  The place reeked from the smell in the hot sun, and I had a hard time finding any place to put my feet.  Dexter didn't even want to stay, so we didn't.  

Instead, we went down the road to a general park we'd passed, where we found a parking place under the trees and I walked Dext around there for a bit.  The park seemed to be centered around something called Jensens Lake, with signs about lifeguards and things.  The problem was the water level was so far down, anybody who insisted on getting wet would have to walk at least an eighth of a mile into what used to be the lake but is now just a basin - the water didn't start until quite a way from what should be the shore.  I've been hearing that Idaho is having severe drought problems like other parts of the country, but I hadn't really noticed it before because the levels in the rivers I've passed have looked very healthy.  But that might be wrong because I found a local news item from a year ago that said the level of the Snake River had been dropping at such a rate that they hadn't been able to fill the lake.  Pretty sure water levels haven't improved since last year so what looks like a healthy flow to me apparently isn't.

I've passed quite a few seed companies and warehouses since I left Twin Falls a few days ago.  One today was for "Grasses, Legumes and Seeds."

I came to the Fort Hall Indian Reservation.  It belongs to the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and you can see from the route map above that it covers a fair amount of territory.

A sign told me I was on Goodale's Cutoff.  I saw a historical marker about that when I was at Craters of the Moon and seem to have deleted it without posting it, so now that I've run across the actual cutoff, I'll post the information here.

This is what the whole thing looked like . . .

. . . and here's the enlarged text.

I crossed a series of canals that I'm guessing are for irrigation purposes, since there's a lot of farmland around here.

I came to the town of Chubbuck, which didn't tell me what the population is but it sits immediately next to Pocatello, which said its population is 54,255.

It was fairly early but we went straight to the campground anyway.  This one is on a bit of a hill, but they'd leveled out the campsites nicely, so I didn't have any trouble getting my RV level.  (Unlike a lot of campgrounds that seem to think they've got no responsibility for the comfort of their patrons.)

This one also had showers that actually met almost all my preferences: a place to set things down, multiple pegs to hang things on that were also close to the shower (instead of expecting people to hang their towels 4' away as many do), a shower curtain that was long enough and wide enough to cover the entire opening to keep water inside the shower, a decent water flow and fast-acting hot water.  Some places make taking a shower such a lousy experience that I've grown reluctant to check them out, but this time I got lucky.