Bad Driving at Nampa, Noisy Creatures

Canada's CBC radio is great. Amerika has lots of radio stations too.

One of the few interesting things we've heard on NPR - the Amerikan Public Radio Network - was about the Wormfest in Banner Elk, North Carolina. They hold worm races, and then determine the snowfall forecast for the coming winter by assessing how wide the copper band on the body of the winning worm is.

Into Idaho, and the Rest Areas started to bear Rattlesnake Warning signs. We passed a town where billboards promised that workers' hospital bills would be paid by the uranium mining company they worked for, which we thought was rather nice of them, and then we started what was to be a series of crossings and re-crossings of the Snake River. We'd passed 1000km since leaving Vancouver somewhere near North Powder, Oregon, and then hit 23,000km in the Reaper just before Nampa, Idaho, which is where the church bus full of church people pulled an incredibly rancid maneuvre whilst attempting to enter the Interstate, causing us to take some serious - and seriously scary - church bus avoidance action. We passed industrial ruins, and many, many trucks; some with "Oversize" signs attached carrying enormous wind turbine blades; others carrying other trucks. One was even carrying a tow-truck. We passed Massacre Rocks, and eventually stopped at a Rest Area near Coldwater, where we saw an old man wearing a one-piece jumpsuit made from what looked very much like modern car seat fabric. And then we hit Pocatello, Idaho, stole some internet access from a tyre company, and then headed out of town to a patch of National Forest, where we camped for the night next to a wee stream, where small creatures frolicked about joyously, and noisily, all bloody night. Grrrr.