It never rains - Tornado Warning

So we arrived yesterday mid afternoon at the Walmart in Idaho Falls, ID. We relaxed and settled in for a long evening because this is the warmest stop. We are trying to stay as warm as possible as long as possible. Tonight's stop is (was) expected to be below freezing, now in fairness I haven't checked it this morning, but last night it had changed to +2C....... weather knowers!

Before leaving our resort I had made some chili for the road so I heated that up with some fresh buns I grabbed at Walmart when we arrived. The dishes were done and we were relaxing with a deck of cards to continue our Crib tournament (he's beating me terribly).

My iPhone beeps with a weather alert... Tornado Warning! What?!!! Holy, we're in an RV!! This can't be good.....

I grab the passports, the dog and the husband (maybe in that order, maybe not) and we rush out of the RV and split up to begin knocking on RV doors (about 15 at that early hour) to let everyone know in case they hadn't got the alert. No one had. We all go into Walmart to watch out the tire department window and prepared to run to the pillow department if things went south.

The storm lashed us pretty damn good with really high winds, tons of rain and a solid ground cover of dime size hail. No damage to the rig that we know of at this point but we still need to check on the solar panels once I get beautified. Nothing happens until I'm beautified.... and I don't get beautified until after my morning coffee.

From the southwest

Downpour turns to hail

Aftermath

In the end, everything turned out okay but that was quite a fright - for me, at least. Not a panic fright just a "what the hell are we going to have to deal with now" fright! 

So we are still on schedule for crossing on Monday at this point but today we get into Montana and we all know Montana in April isn't known for sunny skies. Wish us luck.

Now, I beautify.

Yet another lesson learned

Spent most of the day finishing our drive in Idaho and then entered Utah. Fairly clear sailing until North of Salt Lake City when we caught up to what were listed on Google Maps as 'accidents', and we did see one but whether the rest of the kerfuffle was more 'accidents' or just city traffic I can't be sure.

Beautiful scenery in Idaho

 

Brad took Robbie for a long walk along a country road in Idaho

Salt Lake City nestled along a mountainside

About 1.5 hrs in a traffic jam

Today's lesson: Don't plan your stop too close to sundown.

Due to the delay in traffic, I found a Walmart much closer than our intended stop for the night and they allow overnighting but we could't find a good spot and Brad wasn't comfortable staying there so I searched for another... 16km (10miles) down the road... off we went. I had a 6th sense and checked the AllStays app again just prior to the exit, sure enough they don't allow overnights and apparently have a towing company scouting the lot. According to the previous RVer the manager said that too many people were 'living' in the parking lot so they shut it down. Fair enough. So on the fly I had to come up with another...  after checking two others on the app, I finally found one which turned out to be the original stop I had planned for the night. Go figure. So here we are, Brad made dinner while I took Robbie out and after dinner Brad took him out again for a little walkabout. Its a dog's life around here I tell you.

Its 9pm Wednesday as I write this but I thought I'd do it now while the generator is running to top everything up. We actually went through a time change and all our clocks say 8pm, not sure if it will change back tomorrow as we head further West, so I haven't fixed them yet.

I'm nervous. Have no idea 'how' to do this boondocking thing particularly, we're in a foreign country -technically, I have seen some 'low-clearance' signs on the apps I have to find boondocking etc... I know we'll figure it out, but... sure wish I had a 'buddy' around who had done this before. I know its just a blonde thing and I'll just push through but these are my thoughts and I hope that in short order I will be laughing at my foolishness.

Onwards and Upwards my friends.