This is the first time in about three weeks we’ve had solid, badass WiFi and OMG NORMAL LIFE WHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!… 65 down, 25 up…
Okay…
So after Yellowstone, we drove out to Idaho for a few days before heading down to Utah. We had zero service leaving, so we basically had to drive into Yellowstone to grab some service and punch in the destination. We’ve been using a truck navigation app where I’ve put in the specs of the trailer and it sends us an appropriate way. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get that app working so we had to rely solely on Google Maps. I trust Google Maps pretty much implicitly in a normal situation, but there are times we find ourselves on roads that make us go, “damn, thank goodness we don’t have the trailer right now.”
So we pull up Google Maps and go, “eh, how bad could it be?”
Bad. Really bad.
Instead of just sending us out the west entrance of Yellowstone and taking Highway 20 down, we went out the southern entrance down Highway 191. Once we were out of Yellowstone, the next direction was a right turn on “Grassy Lakes Rd.” In my gut I knew that sounded like a terrible idea… sticking to roads with numbers as names is usually the better bet. But against my better judgement, we made the right turn and started down.
Within 30 seconds I knew we made a huge mistake and had no way to turn around. One lane dirt road with huge potholes, construction vehicles and oncoming traffic to somehow work around… treelines right next to the road, branches 10 feet up reaching out… a complete f**king nightmare.
No biggie, we couldn’t have been on it for too long, right? WRONG. 40 miles. And it took us 4 hours to get it done. 40 miles in 4 hours. 10mph average. Ridiculous. Fortunately the only lasting injury was sideswiping a tree branch that ripped off the cover of one of our awning arms. The awning still works at the moment, but the electronics are all exposed, so I’m sure one rainstorm will short something out and f**k it completely.
Once we finally got to Idaho and drank copious amounts of alcohol to calm down after four hours of white knuckle driving, we eventually made it to Grand Teton National Park, specifically, a place called Jenny Lake!
About halfway through the hike we passed the visitor center and turned to the other side of the lake. Along the way we passed this fella!
On the way to the park I noticed a sign for Grand Teton Brewing Company while still in Idaho, and even though it was 8am I made a mental note for later. We left the park about 2pm and drove through Jackson Hole, WY to stop for food and beer on the way home. It would have been awesome except for the throngs of tourists wandering the streets, so we decided to pass and head to the brewery.
With a brewery in middle of nowhere Idaho, I had no doubt we’d have an interesting time dealing with non-mask wearers and people not giving a crap about social distancing. We were absolutely thrilled when we walked into a brewery where everyone was outside, wearing masks, keeping the f**k away from each other… little sections chalked out on the grass so the individual groups could hang out an acceptable distance away from everyone else. They even had a clean/used sign that you flipped to “used” when you sat down, so the people at the bar knew to disinfect before someone else sat down.
Good on you guys! Not only responsible, but great beer and great merch! I added another trucker hat to the collection, and Jenny bought a new shirt.
After that, we needed some gas so we pulled into just a random gas station in Swan Valley, ID… total population of 231. The place was called Rainey Creek.
As I was pumping we both simultaneously noticed a sign on the door of the shop with the words “TRY A SQUARE ICE CREAM CONE.” F**king… what? Clearly we need to investigate this further. So once I was done pumping I went in and bought one.
It’s literally just a square ice cream scoop and they put it in a cone. It was very good ice cream. And a very good waffle cone. But I spent the next 15 minutes of the drive with sooooo many questions… Is this an Idaho thing? Do a bunch of places do this? Is it just that gas station specifically, and we literally just stumbled upon it by chance? Is this a big thing in the area?
So we Googled “square ice cream” and found this site. First result for us.
In case you don’t want to click the link, we’ll just tell you this site claims that this extremely plain gas station gets “thousands of people in a single day” and “on the 4th of July, the shop usually expects crowds of over 15,000 people.”
It’s a town of 231 people, as previously mentioned. It’s an hour and a half to Grand Teton National Park… two hours to Yellowstone… how the f**k do “thousands of people” make their way to some very ordinary gas station out in the sticks of Idaho? What radius of miles would you need to go out before you include enough towns to get to “thousands” of people? The population of this town quintuples every day? Just from people buying ice cream?
And the town population grows 6400% on 4th of July? Get the f**k out of here. The logistics of this is just ridiculous.
NO… we’re not done here…
Okay… assume it’s open 24 hours a day on Fourth of July, and 15,000 people is an accurate number. That means 625 people are walking in every hour? 10-11 people a minute. A person walking in every 5.76 seconds. Consistently over 24 hours. That’s f**king absurd. And you’d have to assume it’s really only about 12 hours of business, say 12pm to 12am… so double those numbers.
1,250 people every hour. 21 people a minute. A person every 2.88 seconds. Consistently. Over 12 hours. THINK ABOUT THAT… to get all those people through in that time, someone says the ice cream they want, the employee grabs the cup/cone, grabs the scoop, scoops x number of scoops, hands it to the person, rings up the total, runs the credit card / grabs the cash, gives the receipt / change, and moves on to the next person…
…in under 3 seconds. Okay, say there’s three people working… under 9 seconds. Except there was only two registers… so you’d almost always have someone waiting for a free register. Maybe you get an assembly line thing going, but if maximum efficiency has a person doing each phase of the transaction, I think you have so many people back there you smother it anyways. Long story short, I don’t think you’re cracking 3 seconds per order.
I wish I had the square footage of the store, I’d calculate how many people are in that store at any given moment consistently for 12 hours a day and show how impossible it would be. Also, how much f**king ice cream would they have to have stocked to supply all those people? How much square footage of freezer space would you need to store all of it? Are they including the cost of electricity to keep all that ice cream frozen in their prices for that day? SO MANY QUESTIONS!!!
So… no way. And I’ve probably wasted way too much time in my head over this. As well as this blog. Easiest answer is… that website is full of s**t… moving on…
On Thursday we moved down to just outside of Salt Lake City. I had booked this site super early in the process, and clearly didn’t know what I was doing yet at that point. First off, I booked a site made for a camper half our size. On top of that, it’s right next to an… wait for it… amusement park. Why did I do that? No f**king idea. It was probably 6 months ago. Jenny and I both somewhat dislike theme parks and there was zero chance we’d go in there, even without, you know, an ongoing pandemic. I must have been high or something.
So we spent two days listening to roller coasters for ten hours a day, surrounded by little kids running around like maniacs hopped up on cotton candy and fried oreos, and trying not to run them over when we pulled out with the truck.
Also, Utah is f**ked. One day we drove by a massive crowd squished on a sidewalk waiting for a shuttle from the park… maybe 1-2% wearing masks. Just so out-of-this-reality incredible to us and, at this point, I don’t even know what to say about it anymore.
We did manage to make it over to Antelope Island State Park, a designated dark sky area. I was super excited as I’ve been wanting to see some stars and the Milky Way, and I thought this was the perfect chance. We got there right around sunset and made a quick hike up to Buffalo Point.
Unfortunately the skyline lights of Salt Lake City and Ogden took over too much of the sky and I gave up after a few hours. Today we drove further out into the sticks on our way to Moab, so we’ll have a couple of nights here to see my stars. To be honest, we’re in the middle of nowhere Utah and Colorado until the end of the month, so I think I’ll have my chances.
After this we finally get to Moab where it will be 105 degrees during the day… NBFD. Between that and tourists (of which I’ve grown to severely hate and completely, unironically do NOT consider ourselves) we’ll be heading out crazy early. Basically, like we did with Yellowstone. Hopefully we’re headed home when the crowds and heat roll in.