Welcome to Idaho! (Can't you read it?)

What I called our first mistake happened twice today. I’d mapped a dog park along the way to Idaho, one called Ringer Loop in Ellensburg, WA. It sounded like a dream: river access, lots of room to run. We were worried our dogs would be too full of energy, stuck in the car all day like they were.

We headed off the highway, onto one, then another road, passing a salvage yard with rusty, unrecognizable contraptions looming over the fence. The train tracks made us nervous. More nerves: the road abruptly turned to gravel. But we kept going.

Finally we arrived at what seemed to be our spot. A tiny, RV-unfriendly parking lot and a wooden kiosk like they have at every dog park I’ve ever been to. I got out to look at it, but it had no identifying sign, and said nothing about dogs. It only said what you couldn’t do at the park. Shooting was the top item.

I shrugged back at Ami, who had wisely chosen not to enter the parking lot. I looked at our map again and decided the entrance to the park would have to be a little further down the road. So we bounced and shook our way over the gravel until we reached a much smaller, also gravel road. Here we were advised by multiple signs that we couldn’t park wherever the road ended without a permit.

To our left was a field with an irrigation system set up at the far end. To the right were woods. The field had some fencing, but most of it was wide open to the road we were on and another, busier road on the other side of it.

Esmerelda, our puppy, is fixated on Hank. Hank is a runner. Open the door too wide and out he goes. But we’ve had limited success with letting him run around on beaches when we’re the only ones around.

I unstrapped the baby from her car seat and held her in one arm. We stood outside the car, looking from one end of the field to the other. “I’m sure he’ll come back,” I said. Then, “Aren’t you?” If she was, I definitely was sure.

“No,” Ami said. “But if you are, that’s fine.”

So we opened the hatch, and out the dogs came. Esmerelda ran out on one side of the trailer, Hank the other. She circled around the back of it, and joined up with her paramour. The two took off.

Straight down the road.

Ami called them. She honked the horn. I couldn’t do anything but laugh.

Finally I yelled to her, “Get in the car and go get them!”

She took off with the jeep and the trailer, and Frances and I started after them. I saw her get all the way to the larger road and turn. Coming in the other direction was a car with lights on top of it. “Sherriff,” I read when it got closer.

Now, rural Ellensburg is not a place you often see a woman in Crocs walking down a gravel road with a baby, not a single house around. The sherriff stopped when he reached me and rolled down the window. Politely, with a smile tweaking his mustache, he asked, “Everything OK?”

I smiled back. I didn’t laugh. Miracle. “Yes,” I said, maybe a bit enthusiastically.

He nodded and kept going. Our Jeep turned back onto the road, coming towards me. I noticed that the hatchback was lifted. I wondered why the Sherriff didn’t stop and ask her if everything was OK. Poking up in the front seat next to Ami were two panting dog heads.

That’s when I pronounced it our first mistake.

Later, when we pulled in at the RV Park, conveniently located within listening distance of the highway, we let the dogs in the trailer. “This is where we live now,” I told them. Ami and I tried to leave the trailer again to get some more stuff from the car, and both dogs made a break for it. All around the park were nice, early-to-bed campers cursing us from inside their RVs as we whisper-yelled, “Hank! Esmerelda!”

When we got them back, finally, I told Ami, “They’re gonna get us kicked out of here.”

The above picture was taken as we entered Idaho. I swear it says Idaho in big bright letters on the sign. I sat with my iPhone propped on the dash for at least a half mile waiting for it. I made Ami drive 45 on the Interstate while I waited for it to come into view.

She offered to drive back around in the morning so we could try to get the shot again. “No,” I said. “It won’t be night time then.”

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