Day 33-July 8, 2013-To Marsing, ID
Hot today, 94, sunny, humid.
We caught up with the hot weather today, although they said it was 110 last week. Everybody here is really tired of being hot. They said it’s usually 80 here, they only get 1-2 weeks of hot weather and this is it.
We traveled 155 miles in 5-3/4 hours (yes, we do stop a lot!) Took “Thousand Springs Scenic Byway”. There are steep waterfalls (one they call the wall of water), hot springs where you can take a hot bath and the Snake River is always near us, deep canyon, fertile farms that are irrigated either by the Snake River or the Boise River. This is considered the desert even though it is an agricultural hot spot. Wheat, barley, corn, potatoes, sugar beets, even mint grow here. The smell as you drive by the mint fields is wonderful. There’s both a state and a national fish hatchery along the route. I-84 to Nampa wasn’t as interesting but from Nampa to the campground there were more farms and vineyards. Marsing is considered the “Valley of Fruit and Harvest”. This is the beginning of the Idaho Wine Trail and we started seeing “fruit ranches” with cherry, apricot and pear trees. It was really hot setting up so we cranked the AC on high and drank, drank, drank (water!)
The owner told us this was a great place for bird watching and lately there have been a lot of nighthawks. As we’re eating dinner we see dozens of them swooping right in front of our sight on the grass between us and the river. Some little robins were on the ground too but the nighthawks dominated the sky for about two hours and then, all of a sudden, they were gone. At 10:30 PM there’s still a glint of light in the sky-we are very far west in the Mountain Time Zone.