Churches Churches everywhere

We are just having bad luck when it comes to the weather.  We looked at the forecast a couple weeks ago and thought this might be our window to head north because the temperatures looked to be on the rise.  Well that is not how it is turning out.  This morning we awoke to snow on the ground although once the sun came out it melted fast.

Our route for today was to make it to Idaho Falls if we could.  We have to make up a few miles because we stayed for 3 days in this spot.

We headed down the road as the clouds started to dissipate and the mountains across the lake began peeking through.

Some vehicles had a lot of snow on them in Saratoga Springs so they must have come down from the mountain.

At one of the stop lights I noticed a no right turn on red sign.  It was lit up and about 2 feet square.  You couldn’t miss it.  We have a bad intersection on a very busy highway at home where they have a little wee sign and nobody sees it and so they pull out in front of very fast traffic all the time.  Put this at the 18^th Street and #1 highway intersection guys and maybe the problem will diminish.
 

One of the things we noticed as we drove from Saratoga Springs to North Salt Lake City was the amount of LDS churches.  Sometimes there were 2 churches in one parking lot.  So we decided to take pictures of all the churches we could see.  We saw 27 in about 20 miles.  You can skip over the pictures but I am adding some of them as proof that we saw them.

The drive north was very pretty with mountains most of the way.  The clouds stayed ahead of us almost all of the way so it made for good driving.

Finally into Idaho.

And more pretty scenery.

Finally arrived at our destination in Idaho Falls.  It is called South Tourist Park and allows you to stay 1 night for free.  In camping season they have restrooms, garbage, paved pull offs to park, fresh water and an RV dump all for a donation if you want.  It is down by the Snake River which is almost at flood stage right now but the campground is behind a fairly high dike.

There are a few homeless there, or should I call them tent people staying off in the corners of the park.  I imagine no one bothers them in the off season, because some of them look like they have been there a while.

We went out for supper at Denny’s tonight to use up the gift card that Pat and Harold had bought us for being such wonderful people before they left a couple weeks ago.  Thanks for supper P&H.   After supper we saw this LDS temple and went to investigate.  Low and behold there was a visitor center beside it and it was still open.  We were met at the front desk by a very nice lady who proceeded to be our personal tour guide.  She explained that the temple was closed right now because it is being renovated but will re-open again in June of this year.  She gave us a good overview of the Latter Day Saints religion and the workings of the temple.  It wasn’t long before a few young people showed up and were introduced to us as missionaries from different parts of the world  who have been called to serve at the visitor center in Idaho Falls.  Very nice young folk, but you could tell they were trained to begin the recruitment talk with us.   We cut them off at the pass by making some comments about Gods handy work as we see it from the windshield of the Ponderosa and they settled in to hear about our travels.  Sue and I both agree that this world needs more people who are humble an kind like these people and there would not be so much hate and violence around.   Bottom line is, they were very nice people and anyone would be happy to have them as neighbours and friends and because we don’t agree on some religious stuff doesn’t make them or us, bad people.  We are all entitled to our own beliefs.

Tonight we are camped at the South Tourist Park in Idaho Falls Idaho, at 43.28235N -112.03101W and this a map of the park where we are staying.