June 30 - Saturday - Nampa ID to Idaho Falls ID - 352 miles

Ok Idaho, you got my attention today. I talked to another biker this morning and my original plan was to go down through Craters of the Moon way and then on to Idaho Falls, but he gave me a bunch of roads to go on up through the Sawtooth Mtns. Wow!! I spent 2/3 of the day twisting through canyons with big flowing creeks next me, sometimes guardrails, sometimes not.

A lot of recreation activity up here with trucks hauling kayaks and float boats and ATV's, motorcycles, barbecue grills, coolers, excited kids, etc. There are a lot of National Forest areas and they were all hopping. The temperatures were high 50's over the passes and 60-70 the rest of the day, so very nice. I made a couple stops in little towns for fuel and coffee.
Not really much traffic (especially going the speed limit) so lots of stops to take pictures and read historical signs.
Me and the truckers understand each other and when they get behind me I slow pull over, down a bit and they wizz by with the tail light blink (I hope they are saying thanks and not @#$%).

The entire day was changing scenery. Sawtooth Mountains pop up and then I am am in rolling natural hills weaving down canyons, the tight turns through a tiny gap in a couple small mountains, the giant open valleys.
Met a couple BMW riders who were regulars around here, one on a new GS and the other on an older 650 "thumper". The GS rider had a bad accident a couple years back, fell asleep on his bike, cracked ribs, nose,etc. Guess I'll keep drinking coffee.

An hour before Idaho Falls I saw the sign for the EBR-1, the first nuclear power plant ever built. It was 4:30 so I hustled the 2 miles down the side road and got in with just enough time to do the tour. A nice intern was there and she let me stay a little longer. Pretty low key affair. They built it right after WW2 to use the "peaceful" atom and on Dec 20, 1951 they lit 4 light bulbs with the first ever nuclear power.
They shut it down in 1964 after the first commercial plants started to be built.

I mistakenly got lost and entered a room, I guess I was not supposed to be in because the lights went out and everything turned green.

It took them a while to find the switch to turn the reactor off. The finally let me go after being chained to the fence outside for an hour or so. Jeeze

OK, so I made all that up, but it was an interesting half hour tour of EBR-1.
I had made a reservation at a motel ahead of time because everybody thinks it's the July 4th vacation. Walked down the street and had dinner with a Canadian guy riding A Kawasaki Concours 1000. He got laid off from the Canadian health care system for a couple years and was spending it travelling since the paid him severance pay. He can go back to work in another year or so. We had the usual debate between him and the woman behind the bar about whose health care system was best, etc. He loves Bernie Sanders so there you go.
25,524 on the clock tonight