Time to Catch Up!

Mai Tai waiting in the rain as we try to hitch out of Lava Hotsprings, Idaho

           Back to the blogosphere! We have finished our journey for the moment and are visiting my dad and brother in New Mexico. The last half of our journey was so fast paced we failed to blog any of it. This blog is like our digital journal though, so we must log what we can remember while it's still fresh in our minds. I am already missing the road, but through this blog we can bring the memories back anytime.
          Our last post ended with us sleeping in a beautiful house with a kind hearted man, in Boise, Idaho. Mike was his name, and he treated us to a delicious breakfast of potatoes and eggs (and bacon for my Tys). After breakfast he drove us 4 miles or so to a truck stop at the edge of the city. It was a bustling TA truck stop and it was a very hot, dry day in Boise. The law says it's illegal to hitchhike in Idaho, so we were a little bit nervous about being flamboyant in our techniques. We sat at the truck stop for HOURS, receiving nothing but negative responses to our need for a ride. People seemed miserable in Boise! It's funny because I was raised in Boise, ID and was sort of excited to return to my hometown, ironically we had the worst luck hitching there. Boise has at least tripled in size and is now just a sad metropolis. We didn't have it too bad off though, since we were at a truck stop we had access to food, water, and shade.
           After a while we called my friend Lisa, who we were on our way to visit in Twin Falls, to update her on our lack of success hitchhiking and her boyfriend offered to drive the hour or so to come pick us up. After this we went and laid in the cool grass and waited. Even though it was only an hour from their house they had things to take care of before they came, so we waited about four more hours. It was alright though, it was much better than sleeping there and thankfully the truck stop never complained about us loitering. We were paying customers, I guess that's all they cared about. Lisa and her boyfriend finally arrived and took us to their house where I finally got to meet her two children. We spent two more days relaxing at their house and Lisa and  I had a chance to reminisce about old times and catch up on the new.
           When it was time to leave Lisa's boyfriend Chris dropped us off at another truck stop, this one outside of Twin Falls. It was refreshing to know we were on the road again! Lisa's house was our last stop, so from here we were headed all the way to my family in New Mexico. The truck stop was very busy, and thankfully the people were much friendlier than in Boise. We still waited many hours for a ride, but at least we received smiles and waves instead of scowls. Finally a National Guard soldier offered us a ride to Pocatello where the I84 meets up with the I15. It was a little out of our way, but since we had to get on I15 to to head into Utah anyways, we went with him. Ty and Travis (our ride) immediately hit off and went into deep conversation in the front seat. My Ty is such a philosopher, he manages to hit the touchy subjects of politics and spirituality with nearly everyone he meets. Travis turned out to be a very open minded and enlightened man, we were blessed to be picked up by him.
           We had heard of a place called Lava hot springs that was located outside of Pocatello. Travis confirmed that it was a beautiful place, one of his favorites actually. We really wanted to try to make it there, but it was a half hour or so out of our way along the 30 east. Travis pulled up to a gas station to drop us off and we went inside to get some soda and cigarettes. When we came out Travis was still there and had decided that he wanted to drive us to Lava, despite his early morning obligations. He really wanted to go there himself and figured it was worth the mere half hour drive. Needless to say, we were stoked!
          We pulled into Lava and Travis showed us around the town. As we were looking down at the river we noticed a group of people huddled in a pool created by surrounding rocks. We immediately knew it was a hot spring that locals had dammed up with rocks. We strolled down there at dusk, set up our tent right along side the river under a tree, and went down to the spring to soak. Travis stayed there with us for a few hours and we had a wonderful time contemplating the power and beauty of our eternal beings. The water was really hot coming out of the source, but the cold water mingled with it making it comfortable to sit in for hours. We stayed there soaking until 3:00 in the morning or so, long after Travis had to leave.
           Lava was such a nice little town, and we had so much fun playing in the river and soaking in the pools, that we decided to stay there another night. We talked with the friendly locals, ate at a nice country restaurant in town (3 times, lol, they had good food), went tubing down the river, and hiking in the hills. We actually found a geo- cache on a hike at sunset. We noticed an ammo case under a bush off a foot path and opened it up to discover a bunch of random items and log books going back 3 years. All sorts of people had found this cache, wrote something in the books, left an item and took an item. It was like a time capsule reading all the entries. We left an addition of bracelet, a cigarette and a lighter to the cache, wrote a journal entry and took a lens wipe and a dollar. It was one of the coolest things we've ever found!
          Eventually we had to leave paradise and continue on our journey. The last night we stayed in Lava a crazy thunderstorm came through and kept us awake for hours. The next morning we packed up, ate breakfast and took off on the road. We began hitchhiking from a gas station along the highway  where another storm slowly crept over us. So we sat there in the rain and continued to hitch for a ride, hoping someone would pick us up out of pity at least and eventually someone did. We had to ride in the back of a pick up, but it didn't take long before we were out of the storm. He drove us all the way to I15 and dropped us off at the Flying J, and another chapter began.