I like checklists. I'll use this same checklist for multiple short trips and make edits each time. Eventually it'll be a pretty solid list of everything I need for longer trips.
Friday night started with me pulling everything out of the FJ40 so it could be inspected, checked on the list, and packed. I also cleaned the windshield thoroughly and applied 2 coats of Rainx. I downloaded offline maps on Google Maps of the area along our route and around St. Anthony and Rexburg, I saved several locations so that the would be available for offline navigation, and then I downloaded a bunch of areas on the onX Offroad app. I loaded the cooler and our two bags of clothing and toiletries Saturday morning and we were on the road by 8:10.
Traffic was pretty light on 191 and the 40 can drive at 65 mph quite comfortably, so Gallatin Canyon to West Yellowstone was a pleasant drive. Past West Yellowstone the speed limit goes up a bit which isn't great in the 40. 65 is real comfortable. 70 is less fun. 75+ is a lot of work. So we cruised along at 65-70 and got passed once in a while. Now, the thing about Idaho is that the roads are generally trash. Major highways are better, but side roads and country roads are trash. 20 seems to be in pretty good shape, with the notable exception of the 7 mile two-lane stretch between Ashton and Chester. That section is filled with large, deep potholes, ruts, patches that aren't flush with the road surface, and tar snakes, and it just isn't a good time. Immediately after Chester, 20 becomes a divided, but not limited access, highway, and the road surface gets a lot better. We made out first fuel stop when we exited 20 at St. Anthony. It was 155 miles and we got 15.5 mpg.
The drive to Idaho Dunes RV takes you through Idaho farmland. You can see the dunes in the distance shortly after getting out of town. There are lots of interesting irrigation canals along the road, and it's kind of neat if you like that sort of stuff. The road condition...boy...it's something, and we'll just leave it at that.
Idaho Dunes RV is probably the second cheapest option for camping over finding a spot on public land and just setting up. There are a few power and water hookup sites, but mostly it's a dry camp. The dry camp is basically just a big dirt/gravel lot without any defined spaces. So you just drive out into the lot and claim your spot. We picked a spot that backed us up to an irrigation canal next to the foot bridge, which gave us a pretty short walk to the bathrooms. The bathrooms are pretty decent. There's actual hot water in the sinks. They are passably clean (understanding that my standards are based around 8 years of Army field conditions) and there are showers! The showers require quarters, which you can get at the camp office/store. It's $3 for 12 minutes and, at least in my experience, you get 12 minutes of good hot water. Other than the bathroom and shower situation, the camp isn't great. It's pretty loud most of the time. People are moving into and out of the dunes constantly. The "quiet hours" are not at all strongly enforced. But, it's the cheapest of the campground options in that area and you aren't really there to hang out in camp.
Idaho Dunes RV has it's own direct access to the dunes. So, after we got checked in, set up our tent, inflated our sleep pads, put on our dune flag, deflated our tires, and locked in our hubs, we drove out onto the dunes for the first time. Idaho Dunes RV is located approximately in the middle of the dunes. The dunes to the east end tend to be smaller and the dunes to the west end tend to be the largest. In between the east and west end, the dunes are medium sized. So my first time driving on sand dunes was, quite frankly, not a good time. The 40 felt slow, like it was sinking in, but it was able to maintain momentum and climb some impressively large dunes. I figured out fairly quickly that I needed to use a lot more throttle than I typically do. We made a quick 2 mile loop and I noticed that the engine temperature was getting higher than I like, so we made our way back to the campground.
At this point I was pretty disappointed. Driving in the dunes was scary. The 40 was simply not able to navigate the dunes in the same way as the paddle tired side by sides that probably make the same or more power with 1/3 the weight. The 40 was slow and felt very top heavy. It felt completely out of place and I was happy to out of the sand. But, it was only about 1 in the afternoon at that point. We came back to our tent to let the 40 cool down and regroup. We got to looking at the onX Offroad app and decided that the spur of dunes on the north side looked like they might be more manageable and probably less busy. Plus, the app showed access trails from public roads. Great!
We got back in the truck and made our way around the dunes going east, then north, and then following the routes shown on onX Offroad to access the dune spur on the north side. This is where we discovered just how useless onX Offroad is for overland navigation. Many of the things it shows as road are not roads. Just about every actual road ended at a locked gate. We ended up making an 84 mile loop around the dunes without ever being able to access the section we had hoped to get to. I'm going to give onX Offroad another chance to navigate either The Gravelly Range road or The Ringing Rocks trail, but I'm totally unimpressed at this point. Besides not giving useful information, it kept trying to drop waypoints while we were trying to scroll and zoom on the map and then wouldn't allow us to back out of the waypoint screen. We'd have to close the app completely and restart it. The performance of this app ended up being the biggest disappoint of the trip.
My wife found some information about The Red Road area on the east end of the dunes being pretty easy and accessible, so we turned off onX Offroad and used Google Maps to navigate us there. I found a nice spot to access the dunes near the Sand Hills Resort (which has actual grass, trees, and defined camping spaces, if those are things you care about) and drove up into the dunes. The dunes on the east end were much smaller and there were a lot fewer of the fast moving side by sides. The 40 still felt slow and top heavy, but I started to enjoy myself a little bit here. We stopped frequently to allow the engine to cool and to plan our route through the dunes.
I'm not sure how far we went, but we probably spent an hour, maybe an hour and half, tooling around in the small dunes. This area seemed much more suitable for the capabilities of the 40 and my skill level as a driver.
Here's a video of me not knowing what was on the other side of the dune. (It was a big, steep, drop.) We had to back down off that one.
Here's the way out. You can see Sand Hills Resort in the background.
We did some playing, put air back in the tires, and drove into St. Anthony for some dinner. Idaho Burger Grill is a pretty solid choice, and they have locations in St. Anthony and Rexburg. After dinner we drove back to Idaho Dunes RV, took showers, and got ready to call it day. Thankfully, my wife thought ahead and brought 2 pairs of earplugs. The camp was loud enough anyway, but a group came in after midnight and set up about 10 feet from us (in a giant empty field!). They had a toy hauler trailer and needed to get four 2-stroke quads out of the trailer before they could lower the rear bed on an winch that desperately needed service. I did enough time in the Army that my ability to go from dead asleep to wide awake to dead asleep is well developed, but it's just rude to get into camp that late. If you are going to be that late, and there is room, set up away from other people. Don't be a dick. Those people were dicks.
