The afternoon in Kelly Island Campground wasn’t much fun. Idaho had an extreme heat warning for Sunday and Monday. The forecast high for Sunday was 97 degrees. While sitting in the shade at the campground, my thermometer was reading 102 degrees. The reading inside the van got up to 105 degrees!
Sam and I stood in the Snake River for a while. That water is cold! Later in the afternoon, there was shade on the gravel campground road in front of my site. I moved to van into the shade while leaving room for other vehicles to get by (there was only one other camper at the campground). That helped a lot!
After a while the shade moved into my campsite, so I moved the van back. Then an hour before sunset, low clouds blocked the setting sun which was a nice break. It was funny how 97 degrees in the van started to feel refreshing. By the time I went to bed, it had cooled down to 77 degrees and by morning it was 56 degrees in the van. Even got to use my blanket sometime during the night!
I didn’t want to go through that again today, so we skipped Craters of the Moon National Monument and instead booked a hotel in Boise, ID. Maybe tomorrow we can find a cooler spot in Oregon, though South East Oregon is still high desert…