Wednesday June 28th 2017

Last night was warm and I kept several windows open. Mother nature didn’t like it, she sent a shower trough around 5am. I ran around closing most of the windows, before trying to get back to sleep. I didn’t get to sleep long. My neighbors made enough noise to wake me as they prepared to depart. I was up by 7:30am.

This was a short travel day for me. I had around 120 miles to travel from Pocatello to Twin Falls. My plan was to leave at the checkout time of eleven so I would get to Twin Falls a little after 1PM. The early start to the day combined with the fact that I hadn’t completely unpacked conspired against the plan. I was ready to depart shortly after 9am. I took a slow walk around the campground to kill time, but I was on the road by 9:30.

Checking in before the prescribed check-in time is usually possible, but checking in before the official checkout time isn’t going to work. In this case checkout at the Twin Falls campground was noon. I needed to kill an hour or so on the journey west. I spent that hour in a rest area with the Snake River in front of me and a windmill farm on the hillside behind me. It was good to see an enterprising utility company had taken advantage of the high wind area that the road signs warned about.

Site 22 at the Jerome / Twin Falls KOA.

With a slow twenty minute stop to fill the gas tank, I managed to check into the Twin Falls KOA a little after 1PM. This is the same campground I stayed in during the month of May. In fact, I’m at the same campsite. I came back to this area in the hope of finding a place to stay for the July 4th holiday. This campground and the other formal campgrounds are booked solid. I hope to stay at the County Fairgrounds which has sites available on a first come first serve basis. Tomorrow I’ll check that possibility out. If not, I will continue south into Nevada on Friday. I know of a couple of places on Interstate 80 that currently have plenty of sites, but there is less to do in the area.

Once again I allowed the holiday to sneak up on me. I know I need to book ahead of time for holiday weekends, but figuring out where to book is more complicated. The holiday always seems to be weeks away, then suddenly, it’s next week. As I’ve said before, the need to book sites ahead is one of the more annoying aspects of this lifestyle.