confused
I'd gotten past the rush hour and so traffic was light, despite or maybe because it was the start of a holiday weekend. I headed North out of Salt Lake and up through Davis County, past Ogden and into Brigham City where I bailed off the freeway and headed West around the top of the Great Salt Lake. I probably passed maybe two cars on the run up to Snowville. West from Snowville it gets even more desolate as the road turns North again and crosses into Idaho. In Burley I picked up old US-30 and rode it all the way to the end at Bliss where one is forced to get on I-84 with it's 80mph trucks.
At this point though I'm only 80 miles from Boise, my stop for the night. After I got onto the freeway I had one of my internal arguments with myself trying to decide whether or not to stick it out on the freeway all the way to Boise, or to jump off just past Glenn's Ferry and take that same little back road I took down from Boise. Normally this would be a no-brainer -- take the back road. ButI had intended to stay the night in Caldwell, which would give me a nice continuation on the highway that runs along the West side of the Snake River, and put me about 25 miles closer to Seattle. However, as I was eating lunch in Twin Falls and booking my hotel on the Holiday Inn app on my phone, the hotel in Caldwell suddenly disappeared! The little red dot vanished! Right before my eyes the hotel fell off their app. Seriously. I refreshed the app and it was still gone. I called the Holiday Inn reservation number and the nice girl in the call-center in India said that there was no hotel in Caldwell. I said that can't be -- I was just booking it, I saw it riding down last week, and I stayed there last year! Did it fill up? She, like all good Indian Call Center People, stuck to her script and said "I'm sorry Mister Gary, but we have no hotel in Caldwell, Idaho." I hung up and called information and asked and they had no listing for a Holiday Inn Express in Caldwell either! I don't know what is going on! I know I'm not insane! Needless to say I had to book something else, and the only other Holiday Inn property I could get was in downtown Boise. To get there I would have to backtrack on the freeway from Caldwell for about 25 miles and then head back again the next day. This made no sense.
Then low and behold, as I exited off and rolled into the town of Hammet where I had to make a turn onto ID-78, I noticed a small sign that said "Mtn. Home 20 Miles" on the road I was on. I thought to myself, well that gets me closer to Boise and on an old road, and maybe would cut down on the freeway driving to about 20 miles and I'd get into Boise and not backtrack. So I said "what the hell" and kept going West on this un-numbered road.
Unfortunately I didn't see a train the entire way, as I rolled through Mountain Home and headed the remaining 20 miles into Boise. Then, as is usual for the late afternoon in the West, on the horizon came a thunderstorm. But as luck would have it, he stayed off to my left and I didn't even get wet, although I got to breathe in the smell of the rain wafting in on the wind as I enjoyed the last few miles into Boise.
And I know I'm not crazy! I'm going to see what happened to that Holiday Inn Express in Caldwell when I drive through on Saturday. This is just too weird.
