Our day began with a distraught anticipation of daylong rainshowers, and a cheeful vision of lunches packed for us by the Hugens. Another homerun inside a slam-dunk for warmshowers.com houses. Thanks, Hugens!

It was our great luck that the rain avoided us almost all day long. It had clearly showered here and there, but not when we were either here or there.

The first leg of the next four days to Ogden, Utah ended up being a surprisingly long and boring 50+ miles. We don’t have any pictures to show you, because there wasn’t much to see. Imagine a long, straight road. With some shrubbery, landfills and factories edging it. And imagine that long road being longer. Now imagine that twice. All we wanted was a cup of coffee, but for 55 miles, all we got were chipmunks and woodchucks scurrying into their holes as we approached, as if we were some sort of low-flying bird of prey with wheels. Turns out we *were* in the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area, so these woodland creatures did have something to be skittish about. Another note - the only birds of prey we seemed to see were the F-16s and A-10s from the Mountain Home Air Force Base.

Things looked up in Great View, across the Snake River. We were 55 miles in and all we needed was coffee, but we found a burrito joint! Score! It wasn’t even noon, and we only had 18 miles ahead of us to get to our destination - Bruneau Idaho. Again our expectations for small, crappy towns were blown out of the water by the great people at the local pub, “Cowboy’s Pastime” (It used to be called “Chet’s Pastime” until it burned down while Chet was overseas at war (WW2). “I plan on coming back,” he told his friends back home, “so start building it back up again.”

Dave Tindall, a guy who has 8 or 9 sister’s in law, took to telling us his stories of ranching. His brother was sitting next to him at the bar Or at least I think it was his brother. I’m definitely sure the guy sitting next to him was married to the bartender, and the bartender said that Tindall was her brother in law. Then again, maybe she just had a bunch of sisters. In a town of 200 (including all the outlying areas), everyone’s probably related or married to eachother. That’s not to say everyone was running around with five or six teeth, walking a dog with three legs. Although they did tell us the story of this one lady who had one tooth. It was one of their sisters in law. Seriously. They wanted to give her a job, but they didn’t want the public to have to see her, so they gave her the cleaning job on Monday mornings. Turns out, she couldn’t clean worth shit! (their words, not mine) I’m not sure what they ended up giving her as a job, but they told us another story about how just last week, she lost her ID and new set of fake teeth in a night of drunken chicanery at a bar down the street in Grand View. See, partying in Idaho isn’t all that much different from partying in New York City. People jumping on tables, flashing their boobs, losing their teeth. Not like I know anyone who’s lost their teeth…but I do know someone who HAS fake teeth. And she’s toured France! As far as I know, she’s never lost them though. But even Andy has lost his ID. (It turns out it was in his couch).

Another thing about Cowboy’s Pastime. They’ve got a Mario Brothers arcade game and a Neo-Geo there. Not *Super* Mario Brothers… Mario Brothers. I’d never even played this before. I now have the top 4 scores there. I have a photo to prove it. That and more photos will be uploaded later. Wifi at this campsite (!) isn’t all that strong…

By the way, if you’re around on May 16th, they’re doing goat-roping in the back room. We hear it draws a pretty big crowd.

Every time we tried to leave Cowboy’s Pastime, it started to rain, so they gave us more beers. Our grand total of 11 drinks cost us $22. Score again! Finally, around 3:30, we left to find the campground that Patrick Hugens recommended. It was a slightly inebriated 6 miles down the road, backed up against some massive sand dunes that Andy & I ran down, watching the thunderstorms recede to the south. There are some pretty epic photos we’re going to put up sometime soon. We’re there now, and it still might rain on us, but we’re in the tent, ready to call it a night.