Oct 20 & 21, 2022
After a night of virtually no sleep thanks to the trucker beside us running his engine all night and HoseHey howling his displeasure, we hit the road just before 9:30 with temps a comfortable 15ºC (60ºF). This day our goal was to get close to Nampa, ID where we would make some stops to stock up on dog food and a few Costco items. Overall it was an uneventful day where we just clocked miles and got within 45 minutes of Nampa, ID.
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| HeyZeus loves the RV! |
It was on this day that we activated one of our day passes with Solis for unlimited 4G WiFi. Although I’d bought a US SIM card for our phone that was capable of tethering, it only allowed speeds of 3G while tethered. It’s crazy how fast we’ve come accustomed to 4G and 5G speeds. Dropping down to 3G felt like being on dial up. Thankfully I had 7 unlimited day passes left from the year prior. Day passes are $9 US for 24 hours and they never run out. And, during certain times of the year like Black Friday and Christmas they often have deals that get you up to 40% off the day pass prices. I’m not sure if I’d bother with a US SIM card next year. Instead I think we’ll stick with the Solis day passes and keep my Mexican TelCel plan active which gives 2.5G of data and unlimited US, Canada and Mex calling for only $10/month.
We stopped for the night at the picturesque Snake River View Rest Stop in Idaho at 5:30 p.m. We were hopeful for a better sleep than the night before, even if this rest stop was very close to the highway.
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| Snake River View Rest Stop, ID |
Outside Yakima, WA to Snake River View Rest Stop, ID
End Time - 5:35 p.m. (But we gained an hour due to a time change)
Day 4, October 21, 2022
We got on the road at 9:00 a.m. with our first stop marked in Nampa, ID where there was a Costco conveniently located next to a box store mall that had a Petco where we could get Heffay’s Acana dog food. Unfortunately, our Vet in Canada suspects Heffay has food allergies and so while we’ve been home we’d been working him through different kinds of food. By the time we’d left I had him stable on a single ingredient lamb based formula made by Acana, a Canadian dog food producer. Unfortunately, Petco’s in Mexico don’t carry it. Thankfully, it is a common brand sold throughout the US.
He’d been on this formula for just 3 weeks at the time we left Canada, so it was still unclear whether this would be the solution as it takes a good 3 weeks to see results. It has been a stressful process. Seeing him struggle with scratching himself raw, various scabs and sores and ear infections. Being so late to get my blogs done, I can tell you as I write this now in mid November that the food seems to be working well. No scratched open sores, but still scratching here and there. Now I’m wondering if he’s got an environmental allergy, perhaps to grass? Who knows. But it is much better than it had been.
While in Costco we stocked up on bottled water and a few provisions including vitamin C as I had started to get a sore throat the night before. I was surprised as many of their prices were similar if not more than in Canada so with the conversion it was much more expensive than in Cda.
While in there, Dan stumbled upon a bag of 150 halloween size chocolate bars. Just like a kid he looks at me with wide eyes and asks coyly “can we get this?” LOL! The reason for the ask was because he knew we’d stocked up on chocolate bars before we left, to ensure we had a good variety while down here given the selection was limited last year. Of course I said “yes dear” 😊 MAN! I wish we had bought more than one bag. I hadn’t taken the time to read what the bag included, but of course in addition to some regular brands like M&M, Twix, Snickers it had American chocolate bars in it that we can’t get in Canada. They were SO good! Next year we’ll have to grab a couple bags to throw in the freezer.
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| Here’s a picture of the actual bag. I had to laugh though, when I searched for an image on google this came up available to buy from Mercadolibre in Mexico for the low low price of $949 pesos or $65 Cdn! Yeah, that’s a hard no. 😲 |
An interesting fact about Nampa and this part of Idaho, it has a unique smell. Yep, you read right…the air smells well…like urine. Dan first thought we had a leak of our Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) which is made from urea and water. When a fellow RV’er in the Petco parking lot saw him walking around checking our rig and smelling the air he shared with him a bit of history from the area. It wasn’t urea he was smelling, it was sugar beets. Apparently in WWII there was a shortage of sugar and local farmers came together to make sugar out of sugar beets which have a very pungent smell when they are being processed. We had seen many trucks hauling these, and now we knew why. I don’t think I could get used to that smell though, wow!
We finished our very long day stopping in Wells Nevada at the Petro Travel Centre. Winds were brutal, but we found a spot at the end of the parking lot away from other trucks and sheltered somewhat from the wind. It was a very nice stop with a fully paved lot and even a nice small dog park where Heffay met some fellow travellers from BC who too were headed for Lo de Marcos for the winter. It was shaping up to be a nice quiet night, until we looked at the forecast. Snowbirds are supposed to miss the snow right? Well…not so for us unfortunately but more on that in my next post.
Snake River View Rest Stop, ID to Wells, NV
End Time - 4:30 p.m. (We lost the hour we gained the day prior an hour)
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