Well... we got up to another beautiful day. Slept in til 8:00 AM since the dogs were up until 1:30 AM with all the fireworks. We had a relaxed morning, watching the Wimbledon men's final and taking our time to get going. Before we left we filled the propane tank, 2.80/gal - not bad and hit the road around 10:00 AM.
Traffic was very light as we cruised down the highway. We stopped in Missoula for gas and a Starbucks "Iced Mocha", then it was back on I-90. Just past noon I suggested we might want to find a place to pull off where we can stop for lunch. Fortunately we came to an exit that said "Frontage Road" about 12 miles east of Superior. So off we went, driving on a small narrow two lane road parallel to the freeway, but through the hills along the north side of the Clark Fork river.
About five miles later we found a pullout above the river that was relatively flat so I pulled off the road and we had our lunch, Ham & Cheese (Jalapeno Cheddar) sandwiches. While we ate we watched a group of young people walking along the other side of the river exploring, so we got lunch and a show - heh, heh. After lunch Tina took the kids for a walk and I took some photos of our lunch stop and the river. Continuing our drive along the river we came to the town of Superior, turned left to cross the bridge over the river and got back on I-90. Our plan was to go to St Reggis about 30 miles east of the Montana/Idaho border, but after some discussion, Tina suggested we go to Couer d'Alene in Idaho instead. By putting in the extra miles we could stay there for four nights and be able to explore the area, something we've wanted to do for years.
Driving through the Cordillera Mountains we encountered several construction zones so the driving became much more intense as we twisted and turned our way up and down through the hills and valleys. We passed several mining operations, one was a big open pit mine which scarred the hillside next to the freeway. Eventually we crossed the Idaho border came down out of the mountains into the Coeur d'Alene Valley. It's very pretty driving along the lake, we finally got to ID-95 and turned south to the Blackwell Island RV Campground which is on the Spokane River at the north end of the lake. We got set up and Tina adjusted our clocks back to Pacific time. We took the rest of the afternoon off.
To see all of today's photos, click on the following link:
Distance for today's leg, 246 miles. Total for the trip so far, 9,907 miles.
1 comment:
Amazing vistas of beauty!
Nice camera work too.
The blog is grand adventure.
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