I remember learning the word "penultimate" in high school and loving it right away. Yes the last matters but be anticipation of the end is also felt before that. There us been a lot of silliness, bonding and treats with a little impatience and fatigue that is not unreasonable for having been on the road for two and a half weeks. Today we had a first as well, we failed to follow our prepared directions and went off book for our drive to the campsite. It ended up working just fine since we were still able to follow those brown signs posted to direct people to campgrounds and historical markers and whatnot.
And it is lucky they were there! Castle Rock state campground may be the most desolate and undeveloped place we been! There is a lot of sagebrush and we saw jack rabbits aplenty and one deer. We know there are coyotes out there but unless one jumped in front of our car, there's no way we'd see it, he sagebrush is so thick.
We arrived at camp in time for some down time. 3/4 of us read books for a bit while the remainder went and found some kids to play with. After dinner we droves into the City of Rocks National Reserve that is directly adjacent to the campground. The sun was going down but we had some great views of some interesting terrain. It is a good thing that we are all appreciative of a good view and the wonders of geology. It seems not to have gotten old for any of us, especially when the rocks can be climbed!
It is going to be chilly tonight after a hot day and the sky is so clear that you can see millions of stars. I wish the kids weren't so tired and that we did t have such an early departure tomorrow so we could wake them up and show them! But tomorrow we are meeting up with an old very good friend of Tim's and we need to be in Boise by lunchtime!
Here are some shots of the day:
Nifty little access mounds for animals to escape when they find themselves in the freeway corridor. We saw these all over Colorado and Utah.
Timing shots from 65 MPH is hard. Idaho is not a new state for this trip but our final non-Oregon one!
Fun little treats have made the drive continually entertaining. This was a small container of Gak that had googly eyes. It was called Bob Glob and was quite a hit this morning!
Not hard to see where the name Castle Rock came from!
This rock intrigued me with its amazingly flat surface and the way it was toppled over so casually. I would have had a kid in the picture for context (it was over 6 ft tall) but they were both on the rocks with their father climbing, because they do t care if I have a heart attack and die. :-)
Extended view
Gratuitous fat lizard shot!
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