ROAD TRIP!!!!

Okay, so I've gotten your attention. I kind of had a bad week last week. One of those times full of "when it rains, it pours" life changing and life annoying issues that turn a person into an irrational and distraught person. I knew the best thing for me was to get out of "Dodge" or in this case, Boise, and visit with folks who are always uplifting to me.
At the suggestion of my brother in law, Steve, I drove from Boise to Bliss and hopped off the freeway (I-84) and headed toward Gooding. I didn't take any pictures at Gooding but wished I'd had the "smell o' meter" so I could somehow give your olfactories a whiff of the 1000 plus head industrial dairy that comes into view just slightly west of the highway once you get off I-84 and head north toward Gooding. Gooding County commissioners seem to love trashing the landscape with industrial dairy farms, not to mention the smell, and the waste stream. Imagine this--we ship out nearly 100 percent of the milk products and keep 100% of the cow poop. Gotta love the Idaho dairy industry. Instead of "got milk?" the motto should be "got poop?" Then I drove through Shoshone where gas prices were a dime cheaper than Boise. Heading just barely south out of Shoshone you turn east picking up state Highway 24 that then zooms you over a great paved road hardly used that takes you through MOAN country. That's MIddle of Absolutely Nowhere for the uninitiated. MOAN in this neck of the woods, means driving through such esteemed places at Dietrich, Kimama Butte, Acequia, and Minidoka.
It's also not far from where our nation made one of the worst errors of their history other than abject slavery--the Minidoka Internment Camp. The Camp was where over 10,000 people of Japanese ancestry who were citizens of this country were rounded up after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Nation of Japan. Our government had the audacity to question their allegiance to our country and placed them in concentration camps. You really can't call them anything else, because that in essence is what they were. Most of these folks came from near cool, rainy Seattle and were dumped into the scrub 110 degree heat of the high desert of Idaho with shanty barracks to live in.Ultimately water was diverted from the MIlner Gooding Canal so they could grow crops. The children were educated. A couple of renowned artists were interned at the camp. But it was a dark day in history from my point of view that this could ever have happened. I looked in vane to find Hunt Road, which surely goes by the Mormon road numbering system and I think the signs had been pulled down. I do know that virtually nothing if left of the camp buildings and maybe that is really a blessing in disguise.
The highlights of the drive along this portion of the route included the train station at Shoshone, where Amtrak no longer stops. I remember picking my mom up there at 3 a.m. when I lived in Ketchum from 1981 to 1984. The Union Pacific still runs the train depot which has fallen into considerable disrepair. Bricks are falling out of the building walls. There were about 4 people working there when I stopped by on Friday. Shoshone doesn't have much glamour anymore. It used to see alot of sheep herders, and the tracks went to Sun Valley in the early days taking people like Marlene Dietrich (gee, maybe they named the town after her--bummer for her) to ski. After touring the train station and having not really paid any attention to it for 25 years I hit the road to get on highway 24. Dietrich is a tiny town of farmers and not much else. I didn't even drive off the road to go into town. The last time I set foot in Dietrich was in 1993 or 1994 because they were trying to get a grant from the state to improve their drinking water system, or maybe it was the sewer. Either way, the town had no money and needed help. It's also the site of a sugar beet dump, though there are far more later near Kimama, Minidoka and Acequia.
Kimama is known for its Butte which serves as a focal point from the bleak landscape, actually. And there remains an amazing water tower right next to the rail siding at Kimama. Mindioka is home to the Idaho Youth Ranch juvenile detention facility that gives young first or second time offenders of non violent crimes an opportunity to get their act together and learn how to live in civil society. And Acequia is something I skipped entirely but it does have a rail and stock yard as I recall. I used to go that way and cross over on the Jackson Bridge to get to the other side of the Snake River to the Neilson Family Farm, but the bridge is now closed so I had to drive in on Meridian Road into Rupert near the town of Minidoka.

Next stop--Neilson Country aka Goose Beach Farm

Back in the late 1970's I married into the Neilson family. Scott and I tied the know in 1978 after meeting in 1976 and I joined a clan of characters and some dysfunction where I remain welcome to this day, despite the fact that Scott and I later divorced in mid 1980's. Steve is my brother in law and he and Marcy have remained steadfast friends. They are hands down two of the smartest people I've ever met. Amazingly educated and self taught on a variety of topics. I love to come visit and hang out with them, dog Callie, and several cats that include Waylon, Willie and now Vanna. There are chickens and turkeys raised for eggs and meat, an amazing garden, a view of the Snake River from the porch and the Albion Mountain and Mt Harrison in the distance.
There is also Glenn, my father in law, who I remain close to. Glenn always was one of those men with an eye for the ladies. It got him into some trouble over the years but he's still plugging along. When he retired from farming, most of the farm was sold off. Steve and Marcy have some acreage, Glenn has some along with his house and another shirt tail cousin has a small piece on the what's left. Scott and acre on the river, too.
To truly understand my relationship to the family I quote Steve upon my marriage to Scott "Well, Marti, welcome to notoriety!". Boy howdy. Being a Neilson was rife with notoriety, and not being a shrinking violet I added some to the coffers when I shot a snowmobile dead in a snow trench Scott and I set to keep trespassers and would be thieves out of the Mt. Harrison summer cabins.
Steve and Marcy read alot, so I'm always talking with them about the latest books they've read, sharing books and geology, and all manner of politics and whatnot. A visit to Goose Beach Farm, as Marcy calls it, is always a joyous occasion.