Baker City, OR to Mountain Home, ID

We spent the day on I84.  It was another short day, which was good because we lost an hour.  Parts of this drive are fascinating.  Look at this cement plant.  It just goes on forever.

See the horizontal pipe on the left?  It travels up the hill and over the other side.  They have their own rail siding.

It's a beautiful part of the country.  Spare and austere, but with its own appeal.

This is an oil train.  They're huge, like the hills, they go on forever.

It was really windy today.  The wind turbines were turned off.  Recently I read a book called The Grid.  It's about the US electrical infrastructure and how it got the way it is.  The book is pretty good, except she takes too long to make her points.  Anyway, I learned that electricity must be used as it is produced.  We have no ability to store excess power.  When usage is down, production must go down as well.   Too much power in the grid is damaging.  So, the turbines are taken off line because their power is not needed.  Balancing production and demand becomes an issue when power is needed and the wind is not blowing, or it's dark.  Unlike in RVs, there are no banks of batteries.  This is why the coal fired plants are important, they can be turned on quickly.  Tesla has been in talks with California to provide battery storage for their green energy sources.   Until we have storage, we can't be totally renewable.

More scenery.

Some parts of Idaho really do look like the dark side of the moon.

We are in Mountain Home, Idaho for two nights as we make our way toward Yosemite. We're here to look at, BUT NOT BUY, a Super C.