On to Idaho

One of the nice things about traveling without intense planning and scheduling is that we can change our minds – and, then, change them back again.

Our original thoughts for the trip included going into Idaho, where we lived for 6 months in 1973, when I was a student at the Naval Reactors Facility, and then, again, from April 1977 through August 1980, when I was an instructor.  However, we changed our minds with the idea of exploring more of Wyoming.

Well, here we are in Idaho Falls, Idaho, which we first saw in March, 1973. The house we rented for the 6 moths we were here sure looks small now.

While I was a trainee, I worked shift work, 12 hour days on week days, 8 hour days on weekends, and we were seeing and doing stuff on my days off.  Karen remembers the house much better than I do.

When we came back in 1977, we wanted to get this house again, because we liked the landlord and the house, but he already had renters in it, so we ended up renting and apartment for 6 months before we found a house to buy in Arco – sixty eight miles from here, but closer to where I was working.

It’s funny, but neither of us remembered exactly where we lived for 2 six month periods over thirty years ago, yet by a little bit of driving, we were able to find them fairly easily.

The town has changed a lot since we lived here.  It has grown from 25,000 to over 50,000, if I remember right.  It has a representative selection of the popular big box stores.  Today, we stopped at the mall, bought books at Barnes and Noble, picked up some yarn and a work light/magnifying glass, and stopped at Lowes for some plumbing materials to fix a siphoning problem on the fresh water tank in our camper – (I actually made a second trip to get something I forgot).

None of these stores or the mall were here when we left the area in 1980.

Day after tomorrow, we’ll be heading out to Arco for a couple of days.