Today we covered 4 states and back to 1!
We started off in Butte this morning, after a short but restful sleep. The Holiday Inn Express was top notch in our books – real nice rooms and comfy beds!
We were up a bit earlier than yesterday, but moving a little slower. Started waking up around 8:30, but didn’t really get moving till around 9. And even then, we just seemed to be dragging a little.
Breakfast was good – a full continental breakfast with fruit, yogourt, cereal, toast, bagels, pastries, omelettes and bacon. Derek really enjoyed the coffee this morning – always a delight to see him cheery in the morning ;-)
After getting ourselves organized a bit, we finished getting ready and made it out of the hotel before 11am. Felix got fuelled up and we were off!
We stopped for lunch in Missoula, at Finnegan’s Family Restaurant. Had a semi-healthy sit-down meal – a nice change from quick stops and “fast food”. The restaurant was a neat place, situated overtop a creek.
Back on the road again, we entered into Idaho through Lookout Pass. Not as scary as some roads we’ve traveled on our adventures, but scary for me as I was driving! Such big hills for a prairie girl …
Drove past Coeur D’Alene - we had stayed in the parking lot of the Best Western on our trip last year. Saw the Best Western as we drove by the exit – we can both still picture our spot.
I really like Coeur D’Alene Lake. It looks so beautiful in the middle of the mountains. Nice cabins (homes even maybe?) on the hills surrounding it. It seems to be a nice refreshing vacation area for the people.
From Coeur D’Alene to Spokane, Washington, it is essentially well-populated and it is difficult to really see the distinction between the different towns/cities/suburbs. We decided to make a quick stop in Spokane to check it out. Last year we had only driven by in the dark, so we had no true impressions of the city.
I discovered that there is a river that runs through their downtown, and there is a Canada Island in the middle of it. So what a perfect site to see! The nuvi helped us to find where we wanted to go, of course with a few “recalculating” messages. Sometimes we just don’t listen! Anyway, we parked the car nearby - $0.35 for 20 minutes (the parking meter took nickels!) – and wandered toward the river. There was this park – Riverside Park – and was it ever neat! They had a fountain structure for kids that sprinkled water on them periodically. There was an indoor carousel and a small amusement park for kids, with all the major rides including bumper cars. An Imax Theatre was also on site. There as a pond with pedestrian bridges and places to just hang out in the park. The many large trees including weeping willows softened the noise from surrounding traffic. What a great little park in the middle of downtown! And on the north side of this park, we were able to look across the river and see Canada Island in the middle. That wasn’t as exciting, but looking for it helped us to stumble upon this neat little treasure. The Canadian highlight was seeing a Canada flag sculpture which we took a few photo opportunities. I’ll try to remember to post a picture with this when we find internet!
From Spokane to Kennewick … the greatest thing about many of the American cities we’ve checked out is how quickly you can get out of downtown and back on the freeway. Within minutes! Back home, it’d be at least 20 minutes to drive from city center to the perimeter – start and stop, start and stop. I digress!
About 2 hours to Kennewick, the landscape changed once again – to very dry and hilly. Almost desert-like, I guess (I have yet to see a true desert, hopefully on the way home this trip …). I realized that there were actually no trees for a while – none, at all! Little shrub-like things, but no trees… Then the landscape became similar to eastern Montana for a while, then areas of ranches, and then a couple vineyards. Farmers in some of these areas were doing some serious irrigation.
The nuvi took us on a brief tour in Kennewick. I guess I had previously entered Kennewick as a way point, and so it proceeded to take us right to the heart of Kennewick, then “make a u-turn, when possible …” Of course this adventure, we just listened to every instruction from the nuvi and only clued into its little game minutes before it announced we had arrived in Kennewick. Oh well, some time wasted, but we found a neat bridge on the way out. We also came across the Jack in the Box, where we had eaten supper last year on the way through. Figured we better stop for supper here again this year too. So when Kennewick (now twice ever), we always eat at the Jack in the Box.
We crossed the Columbia River into Oregon and took I-84 heading west. There is some real beautiful scenery along this stretch; unfortunately after a while it was starting to get dark (only 9:00 even!) and we were still a couple hours away from Portland. So we started to think about the camping option. It didn’t look promising for a while – most searches on the nuvi seemed to be about RV campgrounds only. We quickly checked out one place in some small town to no avail, and then got lucky finding Maryhill State Park in Washington (just across the Columbia River from Biggs, Oregon). Although we had been targeting Portland for tonight, we both feel good about our decision to stop for tonight and be able to continue this stretch along the Columbia River in the daylight. Too beautiful to drive through in the dark!
We found a spot in the Peach Beach Campark in Maryhill State Park with no troubles and had the tent set up within 20 minutes. Sleeping outdoors, we anticipate getting a good sleep tonight and waking up with the sun tomorrow morning. So here’s to an early start tomorrow morning … we got some shopping to do in Oregon (no tax!) … and more ground to cover, as ideally we’ll should be in San Francisco by tomorrow (Tuesday) night.
Another bonus of camping is we save $$ - only $20 for tonight ;-)
Downside is no free wifi comes with the site … but will post this tomorrow whenever we can.
Good night!
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