Twin Falls, Idaho KOA (Leaving)
By 8:30 am, I had finished two stops at my picnic table. I decided to head to the adult rec room to finish the third and upload them all. The rec room had tar footprints all over the carpet. I had noticed this the day before and thought it may have been purposely done as the prints followed the path around the furniture. I thought it might be some kind of purposeful design like painting footprints on a gym floor.
As I was finishing my flat tire story, a green van with commercial carpet cleaner markings pulled up outside the window of the room. I knew I was in trouble. A jolly heavyset young man entered the room. I asked if I would be in his way, assuming he was here to clean the tar off the carpets. He said no, but I would not be able to stand the fumes of the solvent they were going to use. I had to leave the room.
I had only 10 minutes left on my final page and it would take 20 minutes to upload all the pages. I was disappointed and thought of my options. Finally, I had an idea. I had a 25 foot phone cord I could hook up to the phone jack and run outside the door. I could finish my page on the bench outside and upload the pages when done.
I was 10 feet outside the door and the solvent still tickled the back of my throat. The jolly young man and his older partner were in the cramped room applying the solvent directly to the carpet with no respiratory or skin protection at all. I mentioned this to the young man when he came running out about 20 minutes later gasping for air as if he had been holding his breath that long. Meanwhile, his partner who had been in there with him the whole time lit up a smoke. He was non-chalant about it and started flirting with a tall blond female whose husband was trying to negotiate his fifth-wheeler around the cleaning van while his wife was making emasculating remarks about him to the young man.
I know in the navy and any large corporation the employer would insist and require by penalty that all employees where proper safety protection. There are so many stories from coal miners to millworkers who do permanent damage to themselves in just a simple 20 minute episode as this.
By 10 am I had my pages uploaded and was retracing my steps through twin falls. I drove out to the shoshone falls and took a picture of them without any water running over them. My understanding is that because of the drought all the available water is being redirected to generate electricity. I headed south on highway 93 towards Nevada. I planned to make it to interstate 80 then head over to highway 140 and up into Oregon near Lakeview, thus avoiding the dreaded eastern Oregon drive.