Las Vegas

Ya gotta love warmth when you live in a place like Idaho Falls. Well, maybe I should say that if you like warmth you might not want to live in Idaho Falls. I'm not complaining mind you, just relating to reality. And, of course, the reason I live here has absolutely nothing to do with the climate.

So Karen and I had a break from the cold down in Las Vegas. When we picked up our rental car they were out of the economy ones I had requested so they upgraded us to a convertible. Bummer, huh? Well, we made the best of it and ended up getting a little sun burned along the way, but it was well worth it.


My quest to see some wild flowers turned out to be a little more difficult than I expected. We managed to find some but they were not as abundant as I had hoped. We also got to do a little botanizing and figured out the difference between Joshua Trees and Yucca. Both have similar leaves but now that we know the difference.

Here's Karen standing by a Joshua Tree.

So this whole trip turned out to be a fantastic get away for us and we enjoyed it and each other's company immensely. Ya gotta love the cold of Idaho Falls, especially from Las Vegas!

Things

Things are going quite well for me these days. Of course I'm trying to always stay on the positive side of my thoughts since it makes no sense at all to dwell on the negative side. Not that there are too many negative things going on in my life right now mind you, there aren't. Actually I'm a very happy guy these days and I have not had one second since I moved to Idaho that I felt like I needed to be someplace else. Before I moved here I had those feelings often and now not at all. Must say something about being in the right place, huh?

Well, next week Karen and I are going to fly down to Vegas for a couple of days and as luck has it the temperatures while we are going to be there are predicted to be in the 70's and 80's. Both of us are going to be enjoying the warmth and I rented a car so we could get out in the desert and do a little walking and I'm hoping there are some wild flowers blooming. With all the wet weather that the desert has gotten this winter, there might be a nice bloom this year and mid March is a good time to catch some of it as long as you find the right elevation for that particular time period. I was down there last year in March and here are a couple of pictures I took then of wild flowers I found. The orange flower is Globe Mallow but I don't know the name of the purple one. The cactus can also have some beautiful blossoms and they are brilliant if you catch them at the right time.

No matter what, spending time in the desert with the lady I love is going to be a great thing for me. I'll be taking pictures so hopefully some of them I'll find worthy to post here after we get back.

Teton Valley

Karen and I had a nice drive up to Teton Valley on Monday. We got to see the Tetons from the back side and they were quite beautiful from this side too. The roads were clear but there is still a lot of snow on the ground up there. We stopped for lunch at a little cafe in Driggs and had a pretty good chicken salad. Since Karen had 2 days off again this week we had one social day and one day doing stuff by ourselves and Monday was the day for that. It goes without saying that spending the day out exploring the area with the lady I love had to be the best. And it was!!!

The social day was Sunday. After church we had a load of people over for dinner. It was Debbe's birthday so we had a birthday cake for her and everyone had a good time. Poor Debbe spent most of the day cooking side dishes for dinner but she likes doing that sort of thing so it was all good. The original idea for the occasion came from Jennifer, Karen's next door neighbor who was going to cook dinner for us but the whole affair blossomed into a major event and we had a total of 16 people there. Turkey and ham were on the menu and a little birthday cake to boot.

Apartment dweller

I found an apartment that I could afford and will be moving in on Monday. It's a really small place but it will do for now. This will be the first time I have lived in an apartment since the early 70's. This place is only 12 blocks from Karen's house so walking back and forth or riding my bike when it's warm enough will be the best means of transportation.

It's clear, sunny and quite cold this morning. It was around 16° when I walked Karen to work and when I came back I was walking against the wind and you talk about cold! This was the coldest morning I have been out walking yet. If it's this cold tomorrow and we walk to work I'll have to wear a few more clothes and a hood. I actually saw 2 people on bikes today and they had to be suffering from the wind chill. Ahhhh, the joys of winter!

Jackson Hole, Wyoming!

Yesterday Karen and I drove over to Jackson Wyoming. Everyone calls it Jackson Hole and as you can see in this first picture, it's plastered all over town like that too, but the actual name of the town is just Jackson. Anyway, it isn't that far from Idaho Falls so it doesn't take all that long to get there and the drive is through some beautiful country and with Karen by my side it was a great day. The local park has these arches made from shed elk antlers and the Jackson Hole sign is from some moose antlers. We saw some huge herds of elk and also a few moose along the way. The novelty of all this is a nice change for me from the usual animals I used to see in the Susanville area. But then the best part about yesterday was being with Karen and the fact that she didn't have to work and we could spend the whole day together.

We walked around town and checked out this old bar she told me about that had the coolest motif, a wood decor made from trees that had burls all over them. The bar top had silver dollars embedded in it and they were the old silver dollars, which was way cool. This town is very trendy and we went through some of the shops and checked out what they were selling there but there were very few people which seemed odd for a Sunday. The ski slopes above town had no skiers so I'm not sure if they were open or not. We parked at the small visitor center and Karen was trying to show me something when I took this picture of her.

Along the way to Jackson we had to go by Pallisades Reservoir and it was ice covered but her jeep made a nice contrast to all the white.

We took quite a few pictures of the elk and moose but I didn't want to post all of them here.

All in all, we had a wonderful day out together seeing what were some new sights for me but the truth was it was all about the company.

Cost of living

Well, now that I have been in Idaho Falls for a few days I can see that it is going to be a much cheaper place to live than Susanville. Of course I noticed that when I was here in December too but now I live here and it's even more evident. The price of gas was $1.67 today I saw as I was driving down 17th st. It was $2.23 or thereabouts when I left Screwsanville. Just about everything is cheaper here. The one thing that might be considered more is that the food is taxed unlike in California. The sales tax rate is only 6% here which is cheaper than California but if you consider the tax on food, it's almost a wash. At any rate, this town has 2 super Walmarts, at least one Winco, a Home Depot and a Lowes. All of those were lacking in Susanville. What we don't have is a Costco, but there is a Sam's Club. I guess I'll either have to get a membership there or Karen might be able to add me to hers. Sam's doesn't seem to have the variety that Costco does but when you walk through the door, it looks just like a Costco.

So my conversion to an Idaho resident is continuing, I still need to get to the DMV and get my license and registration changed over to Idaho and I should be able to do that before the end of the week. One thing for sure, I won't be posting any more pictures from the Bizz Johnson trail here.

Made it to Idaho!

I had a great drive to Idaho. I spent the night last night in Winnemucca before finishing my trip today. I got into Idaho Falls about 1:30 and I never saw a snow flake until I got here. There were a few icy spots on the road but it wasn't bad and most of the way it was on dry pavement. Now I am exactly where I want to be!