Day 6

 We left Evanston, Wyoming and headed to Boise on the morning of Day 6! It was exciting to be closer to seeing our friends, but the RV park from this night was probably my favorite so far. It was just shaded and natural enough to feel like camping, but nice enough with nice facilities to not feel like we were roughing it.

The thing about roughing it, lest all of my outdoorsy friends think I’ve sold out, is that it’s really fun short term. And it’s really fun if you’re an adult. But when you’re camping semi-long term with two small kids, some aminities are nice. My favorite one at this RV park was the playground. I’m such a mom, right? The funny thing about the playground is that it was metal. Now y’all who had kids a long time ago or who don’t have kids yet might not pay much attention to playgrounds these days, but let me tell you…if they are metal at all (and that’s a big if), they’re coated metal. Most parts of them are plastic.

This playground was just straight up silver colored metal.

The slide was plastic, but the drop off was kind of like the slide of doom, so that made up for it. The moral of the story is that nothing about this playground was safe. It looked like the ones I grew up with, where you could use your imagination and play and be just a little bit unsafe. I hadn’t realized how tame playgrounds were these days…

Our drive took us into Utah very quickly and the interstate went into the mountains. The rocks on the mountains were red, and they contrasted with the green trees. It was all at once desolate and beautiful, and utterly isolated wilderness in places. The interesting thing out here is that it sometimes seems arbitrary where the towns are. It’s just wilderness and then all of the sudden there’s a town.

We drove fairly close to the Great Salt Lake. We may have seen part of it? We’re not really sure. But we did enjoy looking at the faded, hazy desert mountains in the distance. It’s so interesting to me how the mountains all have different colors.

In Mountain Home, Idaho we stopped for coffee at a drive through stand (why can’t we have more of those in Georgia???), and then through Boise to Nampa, Idaho where my friend Rachael lives. We spent the night at her adorable house with her and her family. That was one of the highlights in the trip since it had been six years since we’d seen each other, and we’ve each had two kids since then. The boys got along well, our husbands had fun talking theology, and we enjoyed catching up and getting to talk in person, instead of on the phone while we fold laundry.