We’re enjoying our stay at Juniper Campground on the northeast side of the Ririe Reservoir. The reservoir was formed when the US Army Corps of Engineers built a dam in 1972. The reservoir is fed by a few creeks and covers about 1,500 acres. Donna has explored most of the water access points from the campground. On Friday, we got in the truck and she showed where I might want to try fishing.
I saw a sign with a reservoir map and it showed a fishing access site on the southwest end of the reservoir called the Blacktail Day Use Area. We decided to take a drive and check it out. I had my fishing pole, tackle box and some nightcrawlers. It was a fairly long drive from Juniper Campground to get around the reservoir and we had to traverse about five miles of gravel road. At the entrance to Blacktail, we had to pay a $5 day use fee.
We hiked down a trail to the water’s edge and I tried my hand at fishing. I didn’t get so much as a nibble. I talked to another fisherman there – he had half a dozen rainbow trout on his stringer – he told me the fish were all caught earlier in the day and they seemed to quit biting in the last hour or so. We had similar fishing set-ups, so it wasn’t a matter of me being rigged incorrectly – the fish just weren’t biting.
We took a longer route back that kept us on pavement all the way. We ended up in Iona before we found the way to US26 and back to the campground.
I had set up my ham radio Buddipole Versatee Vertical antenna they day before and had it tuned nicely on the 20-meter band. I played around on the radio in the afternoon and made a few contacts. I was able to reach out in different directions – I had contacts near Tucson, Arizona, another in Escondido, California, a guy in Livingston, Texas and I heard a guy in West Branch, Michigan talking to guy in Australia! He must have had a great antenna system – I heard his end of the conversation, but couldn’t pick up the signal from Australia. Speaking of great antenna systems, I heard from Janez (S51DX) in Slovenia again. This is the fourth time I’ve had contact with him.
It was getting windy and I thought it felt like rain was coming, so I put my gear away. We ended with a few raindrops later, but nothing serious. The clouds made for a nice sunset.
After dark we went outside to look for the super-moon, but the cloud cover persisted and we couldn’t see the moon.
Saturday morning we drove to Idaho Falls for the farmers’ market. The market was located on Memorial Drive near Broadway, adjacent to the Riverwalk Greenbelt and Trail. After we parked, I was telling Donna about coming here when I was a kid. In 1966, I traveled with my grandparents to visit relatives in South Dakota. Our route took us here and my grandpa stopped so we could stretch our legs in the park and see the falls on the Snake River.
The farmers’ market had a large number of stalls and lots of people.
There were food vendors, crafts and great produce and farm-fresh meat and egg stands. Donna bought a nice head of living lettuce among a few other items. I saw some mushrooms for sale that were gorgeous, but we didn’t buy any.
There was a Veterans Memorial on the greenbelt that offered a nice river view. We walked out there and the Snake River didn’t look anything like I remembered. I know when I was a kid there was a long section where the river dropped several feet along a rip-rap of rocks. From where we stood, I could only see a small area where the river flowed over a concrete dam.
As walked back toward Broadway, I could see the east side of the river looked un-natural – it seemed like the river was split into two levels. As we crossed the Broadway bridge, things began to look familiar. When I was a kid, we must have parked on the west bank of the river.
The river is split with a manmade channel lined by a concrete dike on the east side. The river spills over the concrete dike like a negative pool edge and cascades over rip-rap rocks into the lower west portion of the river.
We made a stop at Winco Foods while we were in town to pick up a few items. We saw some good looking wild Alaskan sockeye salmon. The guy at the seafood counter said it just came in that morning. We bought a two-pound filet. Donna grilled it last night and it was fabulous.
After we came home, I practiced guitar for bit, but my session was cut short when my amp quit working. I had power but no sound out of my AmpStand. It’s called a 12-watt tube amplifier, but it really only has one 12AX7 vacuum tube in the preamp. The rest of the circuit including the output is all solid state (transistor). The amp had power – the power light stayed on, but there was no output. I’ll take it apart this afternoon, but I’m not optimistic. If it was a true vacuum tube amplifier, I could troubleshoot it easily, but with a solid state circuit, I can only hope that there are obvious visual clues.
Before we left Rock Springs, Wyoming, Donna wanted to get some inch-thick pork chops. We found Duroc pork chops at Smith’s grocery and bought them. Duroc is a variety of pig that has darker meat that’s more flavorful and tender than most pork. Donna pan fried the chops and made a cream gravy with sauteed onions for dinner the second night we were here. They were great!
The weather has been good – highs in the mid-to-upper 70s cooling to the low 50s overnight. It’s a little warmer today and the forecast calls for 90 degrees by mid-week. The wind has been gusty at times – wind must be the norm here. When we drove around the reservoir, we went past the half a dozen or so wind turbines we can see from here. Once we drove nearer to them, we could see the wind turbines extended through farmland ridges for miles.
Our friends Jeff and Deb Spencer are due to arrive here tomorrow from Yellowstone. We’re looking forward to seeing them again and are hoping they can snag a good site here when they arrive.
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