Hoo boy..  Sorry for the lack of posts the last couple of days.  Not much in the way of fun, sights or anything else.  We left Grand Island, Nebraska Sunday morning in the rain and basically drove to Hannibal, MO in the rain all day.  Cold, windy and rainy.  When we hit Hannibal it was big time rain.  Driving with your hazard lights blinking type rain.  Found a nice hotel and a local bar and made do with what they had.  Back to the room to dry out. Continue reading →

Day 21 – Friday, October 22

Out the door by 9. Found a Starbucks. Headed south with the goal of making it to Cheyenne by 4 or 5ish. Maps took us on a great two lane road. Snoiw capped peaks in the distance all the way down. Scenery again was great ..Changes every few miles. Mountains to high plains and back. 70mph on to lane roads. Love it. Continue reading →

Day 20 – Thursday, October 21

Up early and out the door. Heading to the parks today. Tetons and Yellowstone. Decided to head to Jackson and use the south entrance. Set the maps. We had a couple of hours just to get to Jackson. Distances out here between waypoints is incredible. Continue reading →

Day 18 – Tuesday, October 19

Time to leave. Let the kid’s have their space. We did take our time though. Finally rolled out 1130ish. Some hugs, final goodbyes. Continue reading →

Day 17 – Monday, October 18

Had a nice lazy morning at the Stransky – West compound. Nice sunny day. Decided to head out for lunch, then to the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum downtown. Continue reading →

Day 14, Friday, October 15

Did our morning routine in Twisp. Decided to head down to Wenatchee, then take US 2 into Seattle. Followed a road through the countryside until we ht the Columbia River again and then followed that in Wenatchee. Another dam. We did not stop. Continue reading →

Day 13 – Thursday, Oct. 14

Overcast. And still cool. In the 30’s. Up early. Loaded up with coffee. Got the blog out. Continue reading →

Day 12 – October13

Woke up to 36° in beautiful Bonners Ferry. Overcast. Not in a big hurry. I am digging the Starbucks Via coffee in the morning. We got out of there about 945a. Decided to head to Spokane then north again to check out the remote WA towns along the border. Irena and I lived in Vancouver, WA (across from Portland) in the 80’s. Never really explored the northern border portion of the state.

Put Bonners Ferry in the rear view mirror. While nice, I really can’t think of the next time I will be there. Headed south and came upon Sandy Point. Colorful little town on the Sandy River. Nice touristy downtown. Weather turned to rain. Temp soared to maybe 40.

Google maps was trying to take us off US 2 to a ‘faster route’ and took us straight into a construction zone that was hard to get out of. Finally found US 2 again. Now heading west again. In a bit of time, we crossed the Pend Oreille River into Washington at Newport. Circled a block downtown trying to get a picture without getting out of the car) of an old steam engine. Rain, one way merging traffic etc helped kill about 5 minutes..

Headed south towards Spokane. Never really been there. Rain. Traffic picking up. Set Google maps for downtown Spokane. Long story short it took us a while to get there. We haven’t seen traffic like this on the trip so far. I am sure Seattle area will not disappoint either. Found downtown. Looks great. Got caught in some nice traffic loops, could not find parking near the riverside area (which looked spectacular from the bridge) and not wanting to walk around in the rain ended our discovery of Spokane in about 15-20 minutes. Lets go north. First lunch. By now it was 1230-1p.

Found what looked like a chain family restaurant. In short. A big disappointment. Back on the road. Now 2p. North on US 395. Heavy traffic for 30-40 miles. Thinned out the farther north we got. Still raining. You could tell it was a beautiful area. Mountains on both side of us. Unfortunately we could only see the first 1,000’ feet or so. Now after 3p. Pulled into Colville. Nice town. Contemplating hunkering down for the evening. Drove the town a few times to get the lowdown. Decided to push on.

At some point we got on route 20. Pulled into the town of Kettle Falls. On the Columbia River and Roosevelt Lake.

Scoped out the town with a couple of drive throughs. Found TJ’s. Time for a beverage and dial for motels. First one called had a room left. $69. She would hold it until we were done drinking. Shot a game of pool while bantering with the locals. Looked at their menu and decided it would work for dinner.

Found our motel. Checked in. Relaxed for a few. We sat out and I had a fine cigar while appreciating remote northern Washington. We are again about 10 miles south of the border. British Columbia. This is Sasquatch country. Rambo. Fishing. Hunting.

I thought we were the only ones in the motel units. Then the firefighter crews came in for the night and filled up the rest of the units. They had been there for about 20 days. Most of their clothes soaking wet. I can’t even imagine. It’s 35-40 out. I am thankful for the heated seats in my rental.. There were lots of 12 packs of Budweiser and family sized bags of Doritos going into those rooms.

We took off back to TJ’s for dinner. We went into their ‘family dining’ section. Truly a local favorite. A few long tables filled with 10-12. We found a table off to the side. Dinner was great. Irena had a Reuben and JoJo potatoes. Giant potato wedges seasoned and fried until they were like mashed potatoes on the inside. Wow. Quite good. I went with the lo-carb hamburger plate which was about ¾ pound of fresh ground beef, tomato, onion, pickles, cottage cheese etc. Also excellent. We petted the dog that was going table to table, bantered with the waitresses and had just a nice rural America time.

Back to the motel. After 7p. You could tell we were going to crash soon. Still fight time zone changes. The problem is going to bed too early puts you a wake at zero dark thirty. Ah, no worries..

No idea on destination tomorrow.

Life is good

Day 11 – Tuesday, Oct. 12

Time to leave.  It is 12°.  Internet still out so no post.  Clear sunny.  One of the perks of going to Costco the other day was they had those little Starbucks Via instant coffee packs.  So decent coffee this morning!

Packed. Loaded the rental.  Dropped the keys off.  We have time to kill.  Seattle on Friday. This is only Tuesday.  Decided to see Whitefish, just north of us.  Another real nice little town tucked in the mountains.

That didn’t take long.  Decided to head north to the border and visit Eureka, MT.  Neat drive.  On the map it had those little green dots indicating a scenic drive.  Didn’t disappoint.  Irena, I believe is getting a bit tired of me pulling over for photo ops.  No worries.  No traffic.  Plenty of time.

We stopped by a big lake in the middle of nowhere.  Photo ops and break.

Sign pointing to the town of Trego.  Found it.  Sort of.

Headed north again.  Pulled into Eureka, MT around noon.  Little town just couple miles south of the Canadian border.  Catering to hunters, hikers, kayakers etc.  Found a great place for lunch right downtown.

There is a huge reservoir  on the Kootenai River that stretches into British Columbia down to the dam at Libby, MT.  We followed along for maybe 60-70 miles…  Down to the dam in Libby, MT.  No traffic.  Nobody on the lake.  Absolutely huge and beautiful.

Pulled into Libby and fueled up.  In a few miles we entered Idaho.  At some point the clocks on the phones switched to Pacific time.  We headed north again, towards Bonners Ferry.

It was getting to be about 3p Pacific time.  We were tired.  Coeur d’Ailene was a couple more hours, Spokane a little further.  Found a great little mom and pop motel in Bonners Ferry.  They had a room.  Got my AARP discount. And they had internet.  Life is complete.

Found a liquor store.  Found a nice place for dinner.  Back to the room and crashed.  Not an overly long driving day.  But a lot of turn-outs and side stops.

Life is good.

Day 10 – Oct.11

Up early. Still fighting that eastern time zone thing. That’s ok. Woke up to 21°. Nothing scheduled today. Head to Kalispell for a look-see. Laundry. Shopping. Big Stuff. Thats ok, we need a down day. This will be our last day in Hungry Horse. We move west again tomorrow.

Still no internet service. And most tv channels are still out of sync. I’m at peace with that. Nothing on and we did not come all the way to watch TV.

We took off to Kalispell. Nice, very nice city. Neat historic downtown area. Bustling. Lots of people out. Surrounded by mountains. Nice neighborhoods. Tidy small ranches. Weather turning very nice. Sunny and in the 40’s Continue reading →