nlbarber

I'm home from Boise, though my car is still in the Atlanta airport parking garage. Advice from autojim in another forum was to not drive the car until it's been checked out, as the temperature gage (I think) maxed out. Might just need new hoses and fresh coolant: might have significant engine damage.

My AAA membership was only good for 5 miles of free towing, and the shop I use is more like 30-40 miles from the airport. Yesterday I upgraded to the Plus membership for 100 miles of towing, but that benefit won't kick in until Sunday. (If I'd researched all this earlier I could have had the car towed today...but still probably wouldn't have managed to have it worked on before Monday.) So sister-in-law braved the traffic to the airport, compounded by it being a rainy Friday afternoon, and fetched me home. Tomorrow I'll go rent a car for the rest of the weekend, get the car towed to the shop on Sunday and use their dropbox to leave the keys, and the shop promises to have it looked at Monday morning.

We're back from Craters of the Moon. It was great--we spent about 4 hours there, which was longer than I thought we'd last, but there were clouds and a nice breeze moderating the heat for much of the morning. I'll write more later, but now that I'm settled in my hotel for the week and have showered, I'm crashing fast. Will also put a few selected photos of the multitudes I took. Later.

Short story: Left Twin Falls around 6:30, got to CoM around 8:15. The Visitor Center was open, so we went ahead and checked in out. Bought some guides, chatted with the ex-USGS Park Ranger, headed out. We walked a number of shorter trails, I climbed 2 cinder cones (Krissi skipped the second), saw spatter cones, lots of pahoehoe and aa lava flows, interesting wildflowers, and a few birds and a few ground squirrels. Left CoM around noon and headed west, aiming to get back to I-84 at Wendell, ID. Which we did, after getting pulled over in Shoshone for an expired license plate. (The nice police officer didn't ticket me after examining my Georgia driver's license and the rental contract.) We had a late lunch at The Farmhouse Restaurant in Wendell, mentioned in a guidebook as having won a truckers' poll for "best food in the U.S." (As might be predicted, the food was served in huge quantities, heavy on the starch and grease...). We made a brief stop at Malad Gorge State Park, where my fear of heights kept me from getting too far out on the footbridge across the 150-ft wide, 250-ft deep gorge. I'll check out Krissi's pictures. <g> After that we had both about had enough sightseeing, and we headed back to Boise, arriving just as 3 members of the committee were arriving from the airport and several others were in the lobby. Old Home Week at the Boise SpringHill Suites.

Meeting starts tomorrow at 8. We've got some activities planned for after work--Tuesday is The Tempest at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, and Wednesday most of the groups is going white-water rafting on the Payette River. Not me, as I did that last year and would rather find something new to do.