Idaho Falls to Boise, ID

Day 7 of Two Dads One Land Yacht

-5:40am Wakeup to 36 degrees outside

-6:00am Filled Land Yacht with too much gas, headed out.

Slick Rick told me to plug in "Atomic City" to my GPS, and told me to get ready for to see some weird stuff on the way there. The town borders the Idaho National Laboratory, a nuclear testing ground for the U.S. Department of Energy and The U.S. Navy. This place is out in the middle of nowhere in the desert, and is basically the Area 51of Idaho. Along this road we passed a convoy of three vans filled with Navy personnel in full uniform. In the middle of the desert. We were a little freaked out but kept on going

-7:00am Atomic City, Idaho

When we finally arrived at the booming metropolis of Atomic City, with it’s whopping population of 29 people… The town had a dirt strip that used to be a runway once upon a time, a ton of dilapidated buildings, and a fire station. We didn’t see a single person there the entire 25min we drove through the town. Needless to say it was kinda creepy

-7:30am Middle of nowhere back roads

Headed to our next destination in Idaho, we had to take some dirt roads, which I will never ever complain about. This road went along side fields of un-fenced cattle, off-road ATV tracks, and really the only ounce of civilization we could find was this set of train tracks:

-8:00am Southern Butte

Slick Rick had mentioned to me that there was this mountain thingy we could drive up near Atomic City, so we headed over that way to see what it was all about. Slick Rick wasn’t lying, Southern Butte is a mountain with a climb of about 2,500 vertical feet, with a top altitude of over 7,700 feet in total. We pulled over in the Land Yacht at the base of the mountain to see what we were in for. Slick Rick was a little iffy about the whole situation, but I have confidence in the Land Yacht, probably more than I really should, but regardless we headed off, up the mountain.

-8:05am Slick Rick doubts Land Yacht

After deciding that we were going to proceed with climbing up the mountain, and me flooring Land Yacht to 50mph on a narrow dirt road, we came up to the first major incline of our ascent. Slick was pretty damn nervous about this whole thing, and to be fair with roads like this he had a right to be. (to understand the craziness of the road watch the video at the bottom when you're done reading the whole blog) Mid-way up the mountain we came across this sign that warned people that hang-gliding in the area might be a little dangerous. We’d never even heard of a sign like this…

-8:15am Fake it till you make it

For most of our climb I was pretty much 60% confident that Land Yacht in low range would be able to power up this mountain, but when you’re facing drops of about 2,000 feet into a snowy jagged rock cavern, 60% confidence might not cut it. Regardless, we made it to the top of this Butte, and the views were pretty spectacular. In the below pic you can see a close up of the road we had to drive up, its the squiggly white line...

-10am Back to Earth

We had finally made it down to the bottom of the Butte, and after letting Land Yacht take a breather after a 45min decent down 30% grades, we decided to head for our next waypoint.

-10:15am No Trespassing

We had seen on google maps a road that looked like a shortcut back to the highway, and decided to take it. About 20min into the ride down a bumpy dirt road, we ran into a huge gate that said "Dept. of US Nuclear Energy No Trespassing" and then another sign below it that basically said don't drive any further or we'll shoot you. We turned back to look for another road, and that's when things got interesting.

-10:20am Lost in the Sauce

Google maps told up to turn down a road that would lead us back to the highway, and hopefully not take us through Nuclear Land once again. This is the road it told us to take...

This "road" was basically an abandoned farmer's trail that hadn't been used in years. It was overgrown with grass about 4 feet tall, and sage bushes equally as big. We are idiots and decided to take the road anyway (bad idea), but the smell of obliterated sage bushes on the front of Land Yacht was a decent change of pace from the typical fart aroma we had become accustomed to. This road wound up leading us to another "we'll shoot you if you keep driving" sign, so we turned back only to get slightly more lost along the way:

We really were just driving in the middle of a grass desert with no idea where to go...

-11am Nuclear Wasteland

Once we finally made it out of the desert alive, and back onto the main road, we drove near an entrance to the government nuclear site, the only place in U.S. history where deaths have occurred from Nuclear Powerplant disasters, and the signs there were not the least bit friendly:

-11:15am Arco, Idaho

When we finally arrived at our next destination: Arco, Idaho; I was reminded of why I think Idaho is the strangest state I have driven through thus far. The town was the first town in the world to be powered by a nuclear reactor, and is so proud of their bond with the U.S. Naval facility down the road that they've installed a submarine tower downtown to show their appreciation. In addition to the weird atomic building you can see Slick Rick standing in front of, the town also has a large cliff where people graffiti in the years that they graduated high school. Once again, Idaho is strange

-12:30pm Craters of the Moon

I'm willing to bet that 80% of the people reading this have never even heard of Craters of the Moon. It's a national monument where a volcano erupted about 10 million years ago and created a landscape of hardened lava that makes it look like the moon. There are massive craters everywhere, and mountains made entirely out of cinder. NASA has tested lunar rovers here because that's how similar it is to the surface of the moon. I really don't know how else to describe this place other than to say that we both felt like we were walking on the moon:

-3:30pm Bruneau Sand Dunes

After making our way out of Craters of the Moon, we drove about 2 hours along the Snake River down into a farming town within a canyon. There was nothing but huge irrigation ditches and green farms for as far as you could see, but then out of nowhere these 450 foot tall sand dunes appeared.

These sand dunes looked like somebody had placed them there, and from a far distance they seemed kinda small, but up close I thought I was in the Sahara Desert.

The dunes are within an Idaho State park, which means that you can't drive on the dunes, but you can actually rent sleds to slide down the dunes if you want to. Slick Rick is a mad man, so we rented two sleds and were on our way

With a temperature of about 82 degrees, and sand about 20 degrees hotter than that, we were sweating like crazy after hiking up and down these things so many times. Top speed going down was about 30mph, and almost every time I wound up falling off and rolling about 100 feet down with a mouth full of sand.After doing this for about an hour, and getting sand in places I never want to have sand again, we returned the boards and headed out

-6pm Boise, Idaho

After a long day of climbing a mountain, getting lost in a desert for a couple hours, and way too many mouth fulls of sand, we made it to our hotel and called it quits for the day. Our hotel is super sketchy, to get to it you have to drive behind the loading dock of a Lowe's, and park next to a 6 lane highway. If nothing is stolen out of my car tonight I'll be shocked...

If you wanna see a video of Land Yacht climbing a mountain, and me eating sand a couple times falling off a dune, check out the video below: