Idaho

We left Washington before noon on Thursday morning heading for Idaho for what we thought was two nights. We had been on highway 20 while crossing the western half of the state of Washington, so we decided to continue on 20 for the eastern half. The garmin kept telling us not to take this route for expedience, but we stayed with it. I think we turned a 5 hour drive into a 10 hour drive. This delayed our arrival to Bonners Ferry, ID until around dusk and forced a hasty campground selection. We even scouted a few one-star hotels, but don’t let the rustic exterior fool you, the hotels in sandpoint and bonners ferry are not for the economy traveler. So we settled on twin rivers campground for a couple nights. This is a traditional private campground with a putt-putt course, a swimming hole and lots of close together sites. It was nice but not what we are looking for. This gets to my three primary pet peeves for the trip so far. Third, placing stuff on the dashboard which ineveitably falls off. Second, Christine packed what seems to be a dozen tubes of toothpaste that are down to the last brushfull, which requires angles and pressure placement that test a recently awoken pair of hands. First, I look at a map and measure how long it’s going to take us to get from A to B and by rule it turns out to be 50% more than what I planned. It is a big country.

So we started talking about the Montana cabin around the fire. I was under the impression we were checking in to the cabin on Saturday which gave us two nights in Idaho – but I was wrong. We got the paperwork out and in fact, we aren’t checking in until Sunday. Our first day in Idaho, we went into Bonners Ferry and checked the town out. Then went back to the campground and sat in the river and read for the day. The ground was too soft to put a stake in that deefur couldn’t pull out, so I took a piece of firewood and turned it into a dog-log and tethered her to it. This worked until a squirrel ran through and then the beast of burden hauled that log around the forest. Later in the evening, we played putt-putt and went to bed. I let Christine win by one.

For the last night, we drove into the national forest and quickly set up camp. Then went for a hike in the Idaho back country. We only saw one other party on the trail and it was two fellas on horseback. One of the dudes asked me if I had a firearm with me. I showed him my bear spray. He said he hoped we didn’t run into the pack of wolves that was known to patrol the area. Also, we were in prime grizzly country. It was a nice hike and we didn’t see any predacious fauna.

This morning we are heading to Bigfork, MT for the final two weeks of the trip.