Thursday May 18th 2017

The crappy weather of the last couple of days is over. Today was in the low 60 with mostly sunshine here in the valley near Twin Falls. To the north near the mountains it was cooler and cloudier, but still a big improvement from yesterday.

The sky over the valley was clear. The clouds hung in over the mountains.

Clouds above the snow cap mountains.

Since the weather is projected to improve daily for the rest of my stay in this area, it wasn’t necessary to force the outside activities in the cooler weather. I chose to drive around the area some more today. The direction I chose was north toward the mountains. They’re further away than I thought. I ended up in Arco ID about 120 miles from my current RV park. Arco also happens to be where I’ve booked my next stay. What started as “Let’s check the route north” turned into a full blown dry run of the next week’s travel.

This area of the country had a particularly wet winter. When I was in Reno NV last week they were talking about the high amount of snow pack in the Sierra Mountains and the rivers were running at the highest levels since the mid 1990s. Here in southern Idaho a similar story is being told. The amount of snow in the mountains is very high and rivers are running at all time high flow levels. There has been some minor flooding and more is feared. The temperature is forecast to reach the mid 80s next week.

The high peaks in the mountain ranges are all still snow covered. It is very pretty to see the green lower slops transition into white snow tops. It is possible that some of the highest peaks will remain snow covered this summer. That is not the norm for this area.

This evening is the first day since I arrived here that ended in full sunshine. The lack of clouds have allowed the full impact of the late sunset to be visible. As of 9:15PM there is still enough daylight to walk around outside with out the need for a flashlight. The official sunset for this area was just before 9PM.