Journey to Idaho

From Wildomar to Buhl

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

A friend has moved to Idaho.  He had two large horse trailers to haul up there, and since I used to have a commercial driver's license, I was the only person he knows who has experience pulling a big trailer.  So, he and his wife, and my wife and I, saddled up, hooked up the trailers to a couple F-350s, and on Sunday Morning began a trek up Interstate 15 from the Inland Empire in Southern California to a small town near Twin Falls, Idaho (south end of the State) by the name of "Buhl".  Population?  Just a few thousand.

It was a long and arduous journey, with a number of pit stops along the way, but after 22 hours on the road, we arrived.

The trip began in Wildomar, the town just north of where I live in Murrieta (which is roughly an hour and a half drive north of San Diego).  At his former place of residence my buddy's steep driveway posed to be a formidable challenge when driving one of the trailers down onto the street.  The stand you extend to hold the trailer's nose up when it is disconnected rubbed on the asphalt, and bent inward.  A wooden block would be needed in the future whenever we got to the point of removing the trailer from the truck's hitch.  My trailer was already in the street, loaded there without incident.

We departed two hours later than originally planned, but hey, I am not one to worry about such things.  Challenges in life happen, and the best thing to do is to set it aside and move forward.  What doesn't kill us, makes us stronger.  Learn from it, and keep on truckin'.

I had a back injury a few years ago, so I tend to like to stop and stretch and crack my back every couple hours, or so.  The breaks were not as often as I'd hoped they would be, but with my wife there to encourage, and rub my back with stinky creams as I drove, I managed.  We stopped to either eat, pee, stretch, or any variation thereof, in Barstow, Baker, and just past Las Vegas.  Then, the trip became a whole lot of nothing to see - until we reached the Arizona State Line.

To be honest, I had not studied the route map before we departed, so when we entered Arizona, it surprised me.  Had we taken a wrong turn?  I thought we were heading north?

My wife, realizing my bewilderment, fired up my smart phone and pulled up a map.  North Interstate 15 had not been going north as much as it had really been heading in an easterly direction.  While the northerly tendency was coming, we had to first cut off the northwest corner of the State of Arizona.  We weren't headed in the wrong direction, it's just that Arizona jutted further north than I had realized, and it would need to be traversed before we could enter into the Utah leg of our trip.

We trucked on through Arizona, and pulled into the first rest and diesel opportunity we could once we entered the State of Utah.

My wife and I have traveled a good number of States, but due to my childhood and time in the United States Navy, I have performed more traveling than she has.  In my office I have a map of the United States on my wall, and on it are gold stars and red stars.  The gold stars represent States I have visited, but she has not.  Red Stars are on States we have been to together.  I turned to her as we entered Utah, and said, "Time for a red star."

She was not thrilled about the adventure so far, but the knowledge of having visited a new State of the union did put a smile on her face.

It went from day to dark as we traveled through the State of Utah, so much of it we did not get to see.  But, as we moved through the heart of Salt Lake City, the capitol shone brightly on the hill to my right.  A lovely scene.  I can't wait to see it in the daylight on the way back.

I was also surprised at how far the metropolitan area of Salt Lake City reaches.  The suburbs reach quite a ways.  It's nothing like the endless suburban sprawl of Southern California, but it was definitely more impressive than I expected.

My wife slept through most of the latter part of the trip, not even exiting the vehicle when we pulled into the various fuel and food stops.  North of Salt Lake City we stopped twice for sleep breaks.  During the early morning hours of the new day fatigue and the reality of too much sleep deprivation was beginning to set in.  At one stop at a couple hours before midnight my buddy snoozed for about half an hour while I whipped out my computer and wrote the Uranium One Informant: Politically Motivated article.  A few hours later my exhaustion began to get the better of me, and we stopped again, but this time for a one and a half hour snooze.

I have traveled most of the United States, and something I have always found interesting was the symbols that States use for their State Highways.  In California, it's a green shield.  Texas uses a white square surrounded by a black border.  In the State of Washington it is a silhouette of George Washington's head from a side view.  In many of the States the symbol is an image of the State with the highway number either inside or beside the configuration.  The State route marker signs for Utah, however, were something entirely different.  In fact, they looked like they were taken after the shape of a bee hive.

Curious, I had Mrs. Pistachio get on the internet and look it up, and sure enough, the road marker sign for the State routes in Utah is in fact that of a beehive.

She read the explanation to me. "The beehive is the state symbol of Utah. The early Mormon settlers used the symbol of the honeybee to represent hard work and industriousness. They saw the example of a beehive, in which all of the workers cooperated in the construction of something much bigger than themselves, as a model for a properly run society."

While my Mormon friends are all very patriotic and very conservative, what was read to me kind of alarmed me.  It sounded pretty collectivistic.  The Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620, being Christians who believed they could count on each other, used a communal system of government, at first, and the result was starvation and death.  Individuality, liberty and the personal incentive of a free market economic system, in my opinion, has done more for the prosperity of the overall community in the United States than any collective kind of system ever could.  In truth, devolving the members of the community to workers who only have what is best for the collective in their interest sounds way too much like socialism, a system that has failed time and time again throughout history.

When we finally reached Idaho the sun was bright, as it is now as I sit at a table near the fireplace to write this article.  My wife responded with glee, yesterday, over the fact that the trip was nearing its merciful end, and that the scenery she was experiencing was nothing like anything she would expect to encounter in the southern end of our own State (aside from maybe some of the mountain communities).

I noticed how much colder the air was, so I threw on the heater for the first time.

With the heat came a unique smell.  It almost smelled like a rusty radiator.

What we discovered after we parked at the new house in Buhl was that what I was smelling was the result of a defunct heater coil, and coolant was leaking into the cab, all over my wife's shoes.

We parked one trailer, unpacked another one, and then went to a storage place nearby, making two trips before completing the task of emptying the storage room my buddy had been renting.  That's right, the horse trailers did not have horses in them.  We were using them as moving vans.  My wife was saddened by that news when she realized we weren't hauling horses, but would joke at our pit stops along the way asking me if I had pet the horses, and made sure they were okay.  I just told her they were fine, as long as you could get past the smell they had been producing along the way.

Meanwhile, the former owners of the home were still packing and working on leaving when we arrived.  Their date to be out was last Friday, but they had still not completed the task.

My friend got a call that something had gone wrong in paperwork, so they could not fund the loan, yet.  He and his wife took off to the title office as my wife and I finished up unloading into the barn. Then, we walked around, amazed at how open the space was.

After they returned, we finished off unloading the final trailer and the realtor came by.  He recommended a mechanic, so I drove the truck behind the realtor's car to Twin Falls.  It was a long half hour or so drive, but according to him this was the best mechanic in the area.  Plus, to my Vietnam Veteran buddy's delight, the mechanic gives veteran discounts and said he'd have the truck ready by the next day.

We ate at a local family restaurant, and the food was pretty good.  After the former owners finally departed with the last of their things, we entered my buddy's new home.  The house is a five bedroom delight with an upstairs loft that would be perfect as an office/library.  We slept on blankets laid out on the floor in one of the bedrooms, since all of the furniture has yet to arrive.  Then, I awoke early, took another shower - last night's shower hit the spot after a day and a half of stewing in my own marinade - and I sat down to write this piece.

My back is screaming from the work I did yesterday, and at one point this morning I coughed and pulled a muscle in my side.  Today, I am not helping move things since my back side will not cooperate.  It is a rest day for me, as I take a bunch of pills that will work like ibuprofens without being rough on my tummy.

Meanwhile, in twenty degrees warmer temperatures down in Murrieta, a phone call to our son revealed that he, and his wife, and three of our grandchildren have the fort well held down.  I love it up here, but I will admit, I miss my bed.

The scenery here is great.  During my drive to the auto shop in Twin Falls I noticed a couple snow-topped mountains on one side, and not-so-snowy mountains on the other.  The fields are endless, with trees here and there.  I am told as you go north the forests thicken.

It is brisk, though.  Right now at 9:42 a.m. their time it is 31^◦ outside - below freezing.  Being a Southern Californian, that's not the kind of temperatures I prefer to be around.

So, as I sit here with the fireplace roaring, thermals and a pair of sweatpants below the waist, and three shirts and a thermal top above the waist, I am still shivering.

I have friends who live in places like Michigan and South Dakota, and I am sure at this moment of reading this they have choice words for me that I could not repeat on this website if I wanted to keep my family-values crowd on board.

Last night it seemed like there were so many more stars in the sky.  Today the sky is blue and the greenery is breathtaking.  The dogs are frolicking outside, and the wife is rubbing her hands before the fire.

A great place to visit.  I could even see myself living in a place like this, someday, but right now, I plan to stay in Southern California for a little while longer.  There is too much work to be done, and I have not completely given up on saving California politically, just yet.

That said, I told my wife if the Democrats keep the supermajority, and Gavin Newsom wins the governorship next year, we are leaving California, too.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary