Saturday December 26th - Day 6 of fly and drive trip to Oregon - Eugene Oregon to Idaho Falls Idaho

 I had a weird 2 hour awake spell in the middle of Christmas night.  After blowing my nose 2 dozen times and taking a decongestant and watching a Good Wife episode on my laptop, I finally fell asleep again.  I had gone to bed very early that night so overall I got enough sleep but I wasn't exactly an early bird this morning.  I think it was about 8:30 when I left Redmond.  My first stop was McDonald's in Prineville for a drive-through breakfast. It was unseasonably warm this morning, about 40 in Redmond and it had at least sprinkled overnight.  I wanted to take US-26 from Prineville to either US-20 in Idaho (to go to Craters of the Moon) or as a fall back plan, just stay on US-26 further until I had to do whatever I would have had to do to get to Idaho Falls, the one location on my week long return trip where I actually made a reservation ahead of time.  It turned out that temperatures dropped fairly quickly as I climbed out of Prineville and between about Mitchell and Unity (~120 miles), every summit had a few or a few dozen miles of snowy pavement on either side of it and there are about 4 named summits that go to near or over 4000 feet in that stretch of US-26.  

 

There was no traffic to speak of, like seriously deserted almost always nobody in front of or behind me and only a few opposing cars ever few miles.  That made dealing with the nearly virgin snow covered road with little plowing and sanding relatively relaxing but there was really no alternative but to do a lot of 40 MPH driving, sometimes slower as US-26 is somewhat curvy and has some steep sections. Still, isn't this what I was craving when I decided to drive back to NY from Oregon?  I had a brief car side stretch at John Day and then had an early dinner in Nampa, ID at the Cracker Barrel.  Since it was just 4 PM (which felt like 3 PM since I just changed time zones in the Easternmost sliver of Oregon) there weren't too many diners and I felt reasonably ok with the coronavirus precautions.  It was a tasty dinner and for the low cost of about 13 dollars before tip it provided a relatively relaxed place to rest a bit and do a little trip prep for the rest of the evening.  

 Even leaving Cracker Barrel at 4:30 or so, I was hopeful to only be on I-84 for about 40 miles and then rejoin US-20 where it splits off after being combined with I-84 for those miles. It was supposed to only add about 12 minutes of drive time but the weather was very wet and cool and as I looked left (North) out of the car window from I-84 East, I could see that the snow was just barely escaping the freeway and almost all of US-20 would probably be snowy since it goes through more hills.  That and it it was rapidly getting dark.  So I tried to be rational and stay on I-84 which, after the Boise junctions, became relatively lightly traveled and irritation free but somewhat snowy at times.  Eventually there is a split and you either go on I-15 South towards Salt Lake or I-86 West which makes a time saving shortcut between that split and the junction of I-15 North near Pocatello.  I-86 was positively desolate with long stretches of no cars on either side visible and almost completely dry so it was an easy stretch of road to enjoy Idaho's generous 80 MPH speed limits.

After a brief and not particularly fun visit at the Shoshone-Bannock Casino, I finished my drive North on I-15, exiting a few miles early to find a truck stop that had ice scrapers in stock because most of the I-15 miles leading to the hotel (about 45?) were snowy and it is pretty clear it could snow all night.  I'm very glad to be in the hotel finally.  Idaho Falls is already a mess in terms of snow accumulating on roads faster than the plows are cleaning it up.  Tomorrow morning will be interesting.