Riverside Park, ID

Today was a good example of how things work out, one way or another. We have been armed with lots of resources for finding possible overnight campgrounds, but have been playing it one day at a time, hoping for open sites, or first come, first served locations. This works out pretty well actually, unless it is a Friday or a Saturday. So on this particular Saturday, we were heading toward a very popular destination for summer campers – the Palisades Reservoir on the border between Idaho and Wyoming. Our plan was to head toward the general vicinity and stop at places as we went.

The first place we actually stopped, Riverside, was not listed at all in our resources. And the place we wanted to go, Calamity, appeared to have lost its most direct route, in favor of a six mile gravel access road. So we checked out Riverside, but were unable to locate the camp host. Still, it looked like there were places free. We decided to head up the road just a little to the next place because it was right on the reservoir. There we spoke to a camp host who not only told us they were full, but also told us that our next several options along the way were full. So, we decided to go back and go with Door #1 at Riverside.

This time the camp host came riding up on his golf cart and started …. helping. This guy was a character. And he was also probably the highest individual I have ever met. He even pointed out how dilated his pupils were, so that I’d understand why he was able to deal with impatient campers in such a laid back manner. It’s a good thing the maximum speed of his golf cart was slow enough that I didn’t worry when he took me around to all the campsites so I could choose one. In the end, we had a nice site secured, and a best buddy of a camp host. What could be better?

We had some time left in the day, so we drove across to the other side of the river to look for hiking trails. We didn’t find any. But we did find a constant scattering of RVs and campers over there, who seemed to have just found nice spots and set up by the river. We weren’t sure how that all worked, like do you need a permit to do that? Can you do that anywhere? Or how would you know where it was ok? So many questions.

For dinner, I grilled up some bratwurst and asparagus and we watched Ospreys taking off from their nests, high up on Osprey poles. That was new information. Apparently it’s a thing to put up tall poles for Ospreys so they don’t nest close to power lines. After learning about that, of course we started noticing all of the Osprey nests on top of power lines.

We need to start a clothing line. Instead of the typical “Happy Camper” motif with cute little trailers and smiley faces, we want to have a line called “Anxious Camper.” It would have a smiley face too, but maybe with worry lines or something. We do tend to worry about nearly everything, despite the fact that it does all work itself out, one way or another, every time. I mean, we still enjoy the experience, we just have a lot of free floating anxiety that usually only disappears after a five mile hike. Like we’re neurotic dogs who need to have a run every day to calm us down. We’re working on it.

Total miles: 208.8, 17.3 mpg, 4 hours 32 min. There were hookup sites at this place, but we took one closer to the river. There was pretty good cell service. Verizon has been consistently better than ATT for this whole trip.