Homeward Bound

There are basically three practical ways to get home to Moscow, Idaho from Las Vegas, Nevada. I checked them all out on my Tablet PC with Microsoft Streets and Trips, which, in my opinion, is the best mapping and laptop navigating software available. It even hooks up to GPS so that you can navigate live with it, but it's a bit awkward with a laptop. And they get hot, which is the last thing you need crossing the desert.

Perhaps the most direct route is straight north on Highway 95 through Nevada and nipping across a corner of Oregon before entering Idaho. It's a distance of 1054 miles. This can be a treacherous route in the winter. An appealing alternative employs mostly high speed Interstates starting on I-15 through Nevada, into Arizona, up Utah, and across Idaho on I-84 to 95 North to Moscow, which is surprisingly only ten miles longer. The third alternative with a variation is to take I-15 to Highway 93 North.

We opted for the Highway 93 route because it was only 928 miles, and it offers some interesting sites along the way, some of which we had not seen yet such as Cathedral Rock and the Great Basin National Park. There were some historic little towns along the way such as Caliente with its amazing and majestic mission style Union Pacific train station, which now houses city hall, the library, and an art gallery. We had lunch in Pioche, an old mining town still bearing the scars on the countryside nearby but currently a thriving little town with a lot of community spirit.

At the end of the day, we dragged our tails into Twin Falls glad to be back in Idaho knowing we would be home in our own bed the next night.