30 September 2015, Wednesday

We eat our remaining pastries for breakfast, along with two of our
Ellensburg pears. Our stay at Rugged Country Lodge was quite
pleasant. The room was clean and nice with many more amenities than
Motel 6, at the same or a lower price. The proprietor is also very
pleasant. He suggests we stop at Pendleton Woolen Mills before we
leave. We had not realized we were in that Pendleton.
Unfortunately, they don’t open until 10 am so we travel on.

Our drive through Oregon and into Idaho is going smoothly. We eat our
remaining half sandwiches from the brew pub for lunch. Looking at the
map we realize there is a long stretch in southern Idaho before
reaching the Utah border where there are no towns on the map at all.
Our back-up lodging plan is to eat dinner before we run out of towns
and try to reach a section of Sawtooth National Forest where we can
set up our tent for the night. We’ll see how the drive goes.

After dinner in Twin Falls, ID we are back on I-84. I mention casually,
that we could make it to Ogden, Utah tonight, but we both decide that
since we are supposed to be car camping, we’ll head for the National
Forest. We exit 84 at exit 245. There is a lonely gas station near
the end of the ramp. We turn left toward the national forest. Very
soon, the pavement ends. We have about 10 miles of gravel road to go.
As we are heading into the hills, the flat tire indicator suddenly
lights up. O gets out of the car. We can both hear the hiss of air
escaping from the right rear tire!  There is nothing to do but unload
the car to get out the spare.

Neither of us wants to continue up the gravel road on the spare so we turn
around and soon arrive back at the gas station. There is actually a
sign in the window that says, “welcome to middle of nowhere.” The
main occupants of the gas station seem to be a couple of llamas and a
sheep named You. The friendly man in the shop tells us there is no
one there who can repair tires. There are no services for about 70 or
more miles in either direction. We decide to return to I-84 and head
south. As we review our options it becomes clear that our best bet is
to head for Ogden after all. I have found, while searching on the
Kindle, that there is a Subaru dealer there, and if we stay at a
nearby motel, we can unload the back of Jazz so there is access to
the spare tire compartment.

We head for Motel 6 once again, driving 50 mph (the maximum safe speed
on the spare) on an 80 mph interstate. O flicks on the flashers when
he sees headlights coming up behind us. We finally arrive a bit over
two hours later. We would have been here a lot sooner if we hadn’t
tried for the national forest!.  The clerk at the desk is quite
sympathetic as something similar happened to him in middle of
nowhere, Nevada. He draws us a map to the Subaru dealership. He knows
they have great service as he and his wife recently bought a Subaru.
He also recommends a good restaurant for breakfast near the
dealership. The clerk also suggests we can open the window of our
room and just pass our gear through to unload the car. We’ll do that
in the morning. Right now, we both just want some sleep.