Idaho: The first few...

April 4, 2019
Idaho here we come. We are packed and ready to go. It’s only 20 miles until our next destination in Fruitland. We met Callie and her mom, Susan last summer on the beach in Lincoln City and they have been following our journey and have invited us to park at their house. We will park there tonight and Ron will ride around their area to bank some more miles so we aren’t sitting idle. Meghan grabs a quick shower and Team Ronyx gets ready to hit the road again. Ron leaves 9:30 am and peddles out of Vale. Meghan catches up to him at 7.5 miles outside of Vale at the Scenic Vista. They discuss the next couple of turns as Ron will have to start making turns in a couple miles and Meghan wanted to make sure he had the right directions. Meghan stays within sight of Ron so he can navigate through the outskirts of Ontario. They arrive in town around 11:30 am and decide they should do lunch to kill some time before they go into Idaho. They decide they will all travel across the bridge together into Idaho to get their pictures. They grab some Subway for lunch, then Meghan moves the truck across the highway into the Walmart parking lot so they can see the truck. Then Meghan and the dogs cross the highway again to catch up with Ron on the other side and they all travel to the Idaho border, get their pictures and then walk back. Ron’s phone has been acting up for the last week, slowly charging and glitching. They decide they should stop into Verizon to see about getting a replacement because this is the fourth phone Ron has had that has done this to him a year after getting it replaced. He goes in the store and they tell him he either has to contact the warranty company or buy another phone and upgrade his plan again. Ron doesn’t want to buy another expensive phone that is going to do the same thing to him. He leaves the store. They decide to cash in the 2 miles it will take them to get to their destination. After we arrived to Susan and Callie’s we all chatted and Susan warned us about the infamous goat head thorns that are all over Idaho and how cyclists out here get tubeless tires or line their tires with special material to ward off getting flats. Meghan decides she is going to get their blog finished and Ron gets his bike gear out to ride around the neighborhood. He is gone for less than 10 minutes and returns asking Meghan to assist him with a flat tire. He pumps it up and rides around again and returns with a flat. They ask Susan about a nearby cycle shop. It’s back in Ontario. Meghan and Ron prepare to drive the Great Adventure truck back to Ontario. Susan offers for them to drive her truck. They are extremely thankful. They go back into Ontario to Eastern Oregon Cycles. The gentleman there knows exactly what happened to the bike tire. He places a special liner in both front and back tires and explains how to fix a flat with the special liner. While they are back in Ontario, Team Ronyx gets an idea to go get a Verizon Prepaid phone to fix Ron’s phone issues. Meghan runs into Walmart and gets a phone for Ron. They decide they will wait until his phone is worse before they use it but for now they will have it just in case. They head back to Fruitland and enjoy some pizza and salad with Susan and Callie. Meghan gets out the laptop and her and Susan try to find the best exact route across Idaho and the next few places for Team Ronyx to camp at as they venture across new territory. Soon it’s time for bed.

April 5, 2019
Team Ronyx is ready to head out today, Ron decides he is going to shower quick before they leave. He turns on his phone to check for messages and it starts glitching again. Meghan suggests they should just use the new phone so he doesn’t have to worry about it while he is out on the road. She gets the new phone out of the box, puts in his sim card, and transfers all the files and messages. Success! Or not! Ron goes to listen to his voicemail and he is redirected to Verizon’s customer service line. They try to call out on the phone and it doesn’t work. Meghan calls customer service and explains their situation. The woman on the phone explains that since they bought a prepaid phone, their policy is that you have to pay at least one month’s service on the prepaid line before you can activate the phone for a paid phone plan. They decide they don’t want to pay that much more to get the phone working so Meghan asks what can be done about his existing phone. She talks to the woman for awhile who attempts to trouble shoot the phone with her, then she connects her with another technical support person. After discussing the issues with the charging port, the technician suggests Team Ronyx just buy a wireless charger for the phone. Meghan had an "aha" moment as her coworker/friend had given her one before they left for the trip. She told the technician she wanted to hold off on purchasing another charger if she could make this one work and they disconnected. Meghan had to find it as it was tucked away in their tiny home but, guess what!? It was compatible for Ron's phone! So that fixed having to use the USB port to charge it but it didn't fix the pulsing vibration that his phone was doing. After 3 hours of backing up his phone and rebooting, the phone was still pulsing and glitching. In a last ditch effort, Ron took the phone and plugged it into Meghan's truck charger (which has been the only way the phone has even taken a charge) and eventually the pulsing stopped. Now they can only charge the phone on the wireless charging pad. They have decided to keep the pre-paid phone just in case and will activate it if and when Ron's current phone finally bites the dust.

April 6, 2019
We are moving pretty slow this morning. We woke up to rain. Not our favorite. One last trip check and we decided that we will drive the first few miles to get to better roadways. We let the dogs play with their new friends Ollie and Bell. Team Ronyx and their new friends say their goodbyes and they hit the road. First they take a trip around the neighborhood to measure Ron's biked miles. He biked 20 miles around their neighborhood yesterday while Meghan worked on the phone situation. They drive 6 miles on 95 South towards Parma, Idaho. Once they find their spot to unload, Ron gets his gear all set and starts peddling down 95. They planned to stay at the Old Fort Boise Park but once they got close to Parma they decided they could probably go ahead and travel another 15 miles to Caldwell, ID. Meghan does a quick check on campgrounds and they find the Caldwell Campground and RV Park. She calls and they have 2 spots left, so they grab one while they can. 20 miles into the journey on 95/20 he flags Meghan down. He has another flat tire from a goat head. This time it is a trailer tire. But have no fear, we have spares. Ron swaps out the tire and heads down the road once again. The wind is making for a tough ride for Ron, it makes him feel like he is traveling uphill or twice as far as he really has. 

April 7, 2019
We are changing our route today. We have to get the roof to our tiny house fixed and it’s raining, again. We changed our route to travel south of Interstate 84 so that we didn’t have to ride on 84/20/26 from Boise to Mountain home. Now we are going to jump on 44E to go to the hardware store, then continue East and get on 26 to go into Boise. We booked a night stay in the Boise Riverside Rv Park. On our way to the hardware store, we stopped at a Shell Gas Station in Middleton and ran into a woman that we had met in Vale, OR. When we met her in Vale, she had told us she lived outside of town in the country and she had a black lab that was 10 who disappeared in January so she just wanted to look at ours. We told her our story and she thought it was a really good cause. We wished her well in hopefully finding her dog or at least finding answers as to what happened to him. Her and her neighbors believe something may have killed him out in the wilderness. Flash forward to today and we run into her again as she travels out to Idaho on the weekends to watch her grandkids. We exchanged hellos and wished each other well. How cool is that!? We go a few miles down the road to the Ridley’s Market and Ace hardware. A grocery store and hardware store combo. That’s different. Ron gets the screws he needs and Meghan grabs their groceries. It's still overcast and raining. We decide to drive for a little further and see about the road conditions. They are ok in some spots but for the most part they aren't great. Ron decides to cash in some of his 94 banked miles to just get to their spot for the night and fix the camper. They arrive at the Boise Riverside RV Park around 1:00pm and traveled 24 miles. Ron fixes the roof, then Team Ronyx goes for a walk on the Boise River Greenbelt. It's a really nice walking, running, biking path that follows the Boise river. There are places for the dogs to get in the water, they get to do their favorite game of fetching sticks and logs. After we return we met our camping neighbor John, he's got an awesome little tow-able camper and a beautiful brindle Great Dane named Astro. Ron and John hit it off right away and chatted while Meghan made the dogs their supper and worked on downloading pictures and the blog updates. After supper, Meghan took another 1.5 mile walk on the path as she needs to stay active on this trip too! Tomorrow we will head to Pleasant Valley. We will probably end up in an OHV staging area since there doesn't seem to be too much in the camping/rest area department out there in the desert.

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