Travel to Coeur d'Alene

It was 8:15 by the time we got everything together, loaded in the truck, hitched up and hit the road. We anticipated a pretty drive and we were not disappointed. The route we took was through North Bend where we picked up I-90:

The clouds eventually parted and we had mostly sunny skies the whole way.

Memories were plentiful as we approached Snoqualmie Summit and saw all the snow that was still present at the top:

The snow was practically gone though when we reached the ski resort at Snoqualmie Pass:

 

 

Then there was the beautiful Kachess Lake on the other side of the pass:

The drive through Cle Elum was especially memorable as we recalled many happy days spent at our property there that we sold years ago. We kept our trailer at the time on the mountainside location which provided a fabulous view of the Cascades. We were, of course, sorry we didn't still own that 16 acres of beautiful land. I had also spent about 20 years of hunting seasons in this area which were full of good memories with my hunting buddies.

The drive through eastern WA was mostly filled with farmland and flat, agricultural areas. Following a short stop and a drive through Spokane along the way, we arrived in Idaho:

 

 

Coeur D'Alene is only about 15 miles into Idaho and we arrived at our campground, Tamarack RV Park, at around 2:15 PM. The park is loaded with trees so any hope of getting a satellite signal was dashed quickly when we pulled into our site:

 

 

It will do for one night as we can use their cable service while here. We went exploring in town after our arrival and it re-enforced our memory of how nice Coeur D'Alene is, and we chose to have dinner at a steakhouse - the Texas Road House - and splurge for the first time this year:

We totally splurged as we each had a couple margaritas, ate peanuts from the bucket that was on our table and went all out with a steak dinner for Josie, and a BBQ chicken and ribs dinner for me. This morning, the scale was not very friendly as we both are paying the price for the splurge last night. Not to worry though, we are back on the serious side this morning.

Today is a shorter drive to Deer Lodge, MT, which is about 250 miles. We plan to leave around 8:30-9 AM and arrive at about the same time as yesterday, but we lose an hour on the drive today. We are watching the weather forecast and it seems that we may be OK for the day as we are in between storms right now...