Hello! I’m back, freshly deposited from the mountains of Idaho. Boy, do I have an eternity’s worth of stories to tell you, but first, let’s revisit a classic movie. The scene begins with a disheveled Richard Gere, his back to a concrete slab, doing reverse crunches as Louis Gossett, Jr. berates him, screaming insults, barking orders, and demanding he acknowledge defeat. It’s a snippet from 1982’s An Officer and a Gentleman. Gossett is drill sergeant Foley. Gere is Zack Mayo, a Navy aviation officer candidate who wants to fly jets. The culmination of this scene, which still brings me to tears, shows Mayo finally cracking. He has refused to turn in his DOR (drop on request), submitting himself to the Sergeant’s never ending physical challenges. Since he won’t quit, Sergeant Foley heatedly tells him he’s kicking him out of the program. Candidate Mayo sits up, wet, filthy, and exhausted, and says these words. “I got nowhere else to go.” The military has a long-standing focus of breaking soldiers down to build them back up. There are many reasons for this culture. Drill instructors are looking for areas of strength, sure, but more so areas of weakness. After all, soldiers are going to put their lives on the line. To be successful, they have to move as a cohesive unit. To be a triumphant unit, everyone must give their all, in support of the mission and for each other. The complete and total breakdown of a person leads to surrender leads to a rebuilding within that unit. That’s my best novice, very un-military explanation. How does this apply to my trip to Idaho? It’s all about that settling in period of trying something new. You have to get broken in first. In my case, it was more akin to broken down.
It was day 3. We had just spent two outstanding days in Stanley, Idaho. We found a $20 a night dry camping spot on the banks of the Salmon River. The van we rented back in Boise was a 2022 Promaster, complete with a tiny kitchen and a toilet/shower combo. Still, it is better to use any other toilet than a van toilet, if possible. This campground had a lovely smelling toilet just down the path. We sat outside every evening, ate sandwiches, built fires, played cards, watched birds, and talked about all the good times spent together over the last 20 years. We hiked the Fishhook Trail through the base of the Sawtooth Mountains. We sat on the beach of Redfish Lake, shivering in the 38-degree morning temps, to watch bald eagles fly overhead. But, it was time to bid a fond farewell to Stanley. Storms were moving in for the next few days. Perhaps, we thought, a relocation toward Ketchum & Sun Valley was in order. That’s the beauty of van life. When the world gives you lemons, you can just drive away from them. The weather looked better in the campgrounds close to that area. Though only an hour away, Ketchum’s lower elevation means it misses many of the storms that hit the higher areas. And, how does one get to Ketchum, you are asking? Why, easy. Through the mountains we would go, right over the Galena Peak. Sitting pretty at a 12,461-foot summit, the Galena Peak may not compare with the Denali in Alaska, but she’s a steep and scary drink of water. Still, we drove the Galena 2 years ago in the snow, in a weather ready jeep, where we could barely see the road. Piece of cake in a nice, heavy van with offroad tires, right?
My husband’s knuckles started off pink. I have learned, over the last 20 years, that I must maintain control of my panic-leaning personality in times of stress. So, I don’t turn too sharply or inhale too deeply or gasp (I am a born gasper) when things are tense. If we are in a vehicle and he is driving, I glance at his knuckles. Pink means calm down, Dina. Super-duper light pink means things are still hunky dory. Light pink with a white center means stay very still and very quiet. White knuckles mean for goodness sake, turn off the radio and make zero sudden movements. As we were descending from the highest part of the Galena, with nothing but a 2 ft guardrail between us and the abyss, with massive Class A motorhomes PASSING US IN A NO PASSING ZONE, I will never forget the sight of his knuckles. They were white, as were his fingers, as were his entire hands, as was his face. I peeked. Then, we exhaled. The el-evation began to drop. Then it dropped a little more. Then, it happened. First there was the succession of beeps from the general dashboard area. Then there was the ticker tape digital display of red words on the dash screen. Then there was a slight hiccup style glitch that can only happen when a transmission downshifts. But back to those red words. As you’re careening around a downward spiraling mountain pass, the last thing you want to see is “SERVICE BRAKES NOW.”
Thirty minutes later, safely tucked into our new campsite on the banks of another gorgeous Idaho river, we had a serious chat. We were hoping the van’s owner would tell us, once we were brave enough to chase a cellular signal closer to town, there’d been a glitch and nothing more. But, who were we? Did we like this sort of travel – this adventure thing we were doing? Having silently cried all the way down the mountain, sure we were careening over the edge in an instant, I declared that we certainly were not cut out for this type of experience. Are we cruise people, we wondered? Are we all-inclusive resort folks? Because, whatever we are doing on this mountain is not ok. The Galena Peak broke us.
The next day, we ventured into gorgeous Ketchum, where the van owner apologized profusely for not warning us that all Promaster vans of the last few years have a systems issue where the sensor to the brake fluid was set in the wrong area. On steep inclines, the ample fluid races away from the sensor, causing the alarm. He even sent us a digital document from a dealership assuring him that it was a glitch and nothing to be concerned over. A day in Ketchum was just what we needed. We saw Hemingway’s grave, ate hotdogs from a van in the city center, and decided that together, we could do anything. Maybe we were cut out for this after all, broken down, built up, and everything in between.
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