From Winnemucca, NV to Arco, ID: Sunday, June 13th

We got out of the campground before 9am and drove towards Battle Mountain (Gateway to the Outback of Nevada – I can’t make this stuff up!), passing many cyclists, the uphills must have been torturous. Today’s journey was long, but pretty, many single lane roads, through fields upon fields of green, surrounded by mountains, many still covered with snow.

From out of nowhere, we suddenly came upon a small town with a couple of casinos. Their parking lots were full, it seemed very busy for having so little, kind of weird we thought. About a mile out of town though, we came to the state line and crossed into Idaho – state number 38 for us – and then we realized: gambling! This must be the ‘go-to’ destination for those living in Idaho who like to gamble and only have to cross just into their neighboring state. We also went back into Mountain Time, so back on Valentine Time, I guess we’ll be needing to change ‘our’ time at some point in the next couple of weeks. With only two months to go, we’ll need to be losing two hours somewhere along the line, before we get back on the east coast.

As we came closer to Arco, where we were staying, our route actually took us through the National Park site: Craters of the Moon, that we were planning to visit later in the week. It has a very similar look to Lava Beds, fields of lava rock as far as the eye could see; we were impressed that the kids also immediately realized this, even Nathan.

This week, we are staying at the Arco KOA, which has large grassy spots (in stark contrast to many KOA’s), a little playground and a pool. One of the first things Dave commented on was how quiet it is – we’re not in a flight path, near an airport, next to a freeway, near train tracks; it’s very peaceful. The campground also has a view of the local mountain, covered with numbers; these are the years of graduating classes, going back as far as 1923!

Most excitingly for the kids, there are other families here – HELLO summer holidays! As many schools have now finished for the year, the number of families we meet will obviously increase and the children are super happy about that. They quickly found friends and four families of children created all sorts of different games.

At 8pm, there was an ice-cream social. All the kids sat outside, lolling on the banana bikes, benches and ground, licking their ice-creams and chatting. I really wanted to take a photo but daren’t ruin the moment, it was a great sight.