Why we're outta here

"Be here now," Bubba Ram Yonni intoned.  And indeed, they are now cozily being here now at Site A07 of Riverside, their favorite Island Park campground.

So, wot hoppened?  

Well, it all bubbled down to the city's water main replacement project in front of our Idahome on 12th St.  The project has been going on for two months while becoming progressively more and more annoying.

During the past week the project has been unfolding in very slow motion right smack dab in front of the house.  And we're talkin' MAJOR annoying!  The construction activities have been shaking the house itself and vibrating pictures hanging on the walls.  The noise has been intense and unrelenting.  Due to an unforeseen development, the noise and vibration was certain to become borderline unbearable.

Why?

Well, long ago, some lazy workers dug a big trench to repair the old 1930's water line.  Instead of filling the trench with gravel compacted in layers, they just filled the whole she-bang with concrete. EZPZ.

Well, today's contractor quite literally stumbled into those behemoth massive glacial slabs of concrete and was like, ""Huh?"  And those gi-normous pieces of concrete just kept surfacing like breaching whales.  It was all the excavator could do to drag them out of the ground.

Meanwhile, the pieces are too big to break down into small pieces.  The contrator tried every trick with his many machines. Nope.  No can do. We have no clue how they intend to break up those gi-normous chunks of concrete but we suspect they will bring in a a specialized pneumatic core drilling rig or a hydraulic concussion hammer.And we don't wanna be nowhere near our Idahome when that mayhem cuts loose.

So, that's why we be here now, enjoying another episode of Happy Days alongside The Henry's Fork of The Snake River in yonder caldera amid the densely packed lodgepole pine forest.  As you well know our Love at First Site # A21 is booked solid all season so that one was out of the question.  We took whatever was available and snagged Site # A07 for two nights. When we have to leave A07 Thursday morning, we will simply move to whatever other site might be available, most likely in the first-come, first served "C" loop.  The C Loop isn't near the river but that's OK. No matter where you camp in Riverside, it's a great spot and a fabulous place to be here now.

One of the nice things about not camping in A21 is being able to watch what goes on   in adjacent campsites.  A21 is so far away from the nearest neighboring campsite, we can't enjoy watching other campers.

Our nearest sites here at A07 are A08 and A09.  It was quite fun watching A09 yesterday.  First a Harley couple pulled in to camp. They were a textbook classic Harley couple with beautiful motorcycles and full leather regalia.  The woman's machine was tuned with "hot pipes" so she could make ear-catching motorcycle noises while the man's ride was as quiet as a church mouse.

They settled into camp and seemed to be enjoying a pleasant late afternoon.  By and by, they up and left.  POOF, gone.  They clearly must not have known they were sitting in one of the entire region's finest campsites.  Well, that's their problem.

We then began fear and loathing of the worst fate of camping in a developed campground---a GENERATOR!  Some campers insist on bringing a generator big enough to power a Third World Village. Such generators are huge and very noisy...noisy enough to raise the dead from their graves.

But we got lucky.  Two SUV-loads of fundamental women and children pulled into the site.  We breathed a big sigh of relief.  So, what are "fundamental women?"  Well, that's our way of describing women who wear really long 19th Century style dresses that often actually reach the ground.  Those dresses are always a very drab color such as very dark, murky blue or gray.  No such thing as a brightly colored dress for fundamental women. The dresses are also long-sleeved and the shoulders have a very Old School design. They wear their hair in a style more common to 1870 than 2020.  There are many such women in various agricultural colonies in Montana and also in FLDS groups in rural parts of Idaho-Utah-Arizona.

We figured these women wre from Montana.  Their tents are very colorful and they are traveling with a pack of rather unruly dogs. They enjoyed towering White Woman campfires last night and this morning.  However, their license plates were Idaho so who knows where they were from?

Anyway, the troupe is fun to watch and we have ring side voyure seats here in Site A07.

Wednesday dawned cloudy and cool in the upper 40's and there was even a brief cat spit hiss of rain. This might be a perfect day to drive over into Montana and visit Cliff and Wade Lakes.  We've only been to those lakes once back in 2005 so it's clearly time to refresh our memories about their ballyhooed beauties.

Lots more to discuss but this narrative is already ridiculously too long so we'll say bye-bye for now.  Or is that tah-tah for now?

Whatever, we're outta here.