Kalispell, Montana 8-20-07

We are connected!! Back to the 21st century, though it was really peaceful without all the “stuff”. Our solar panels, batteries and inverter kept us with lights and water pump.

So let me catch you up. On Saturday we drove into Sandpoint, Idaho from our lovely “roughing it” campsite on the Bull River in Montana. It was about 45 miles. Sandpoint is on the northern end of Lake Pend Oreille which is larger than Coeur d’Alene Lake AND if you want to get in while the growth is getting hot, now is the time. There are Sotheby’s International Real Estate signs all over the place and into Montana. Two colleges are building campus’ there and someone told us that Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson are partners in a big 400 plus property gated community. It looks like the developers are turning the area into a Lake Tahoe resort place. Every other store front in Sandpoint was a real estate office. It is touted as an artists community, but it really felt lacking in that regard. We sat on the deck behind Starbucks having a latte overlooking boats at a dock. There was a little Farmers Market that we walked through and then we drove over to “the Antique Mall”, it wasn’t much, but we had a great sandwich at the little deli there and had a lovely conversation with a lady in the yarn shop that has lived internationally and told us all the reasons why Sandpoint was a great place to live. She was missing her calling, she should have been in the Visitors Center. We made a stop at Safeway and then headed back home.

We sat outside enjoying the sunshine, I finished reading a great book “The 100th Human” by Chris Fenwick and that was it for Saturday.

Yesterday we thought about hitting the road, but the campground was emptying out so we decided to stay another night. It rained lightly most all afternoon and evening and poured once during the night. We took a few walks, but I mostly spent the day on the phone catching up with family and friends and Larry started reading the book I had just finished. Then Larry and I talked and talked until bedtime. My lips were flapping the whole day, I can’t remember the last time I talked that much! That little cell phone was HOT.

Quite a few of my conversations were with my sister Lori in Ohio. She had rented a U-Haul trailer and was helping her daughter Lindsay move from Columbus, OH to Erie, PA. They had gotten the trailer loaded and hadn’t made it all the way out of Columbus when the trailer got a flat tire! She had to wait 3 hours for someone from U-haul to fix the problem, he left and as she tried to pull out, the wheel was frozen and wouldn’t turn! The guy put on a wrong sized rim/tire. So she had to wait for him to come back and then he took the old rim down to Walmart to get a new tire, put that on the trailer and then she was good to go, but she lost about 5 hours, maybe more! She hates driving through Cleveland on the weekdays, so she was determined to get the trailer up there, unloaded and then get back home. Which she did but she didn’t get back home until 2:30 a.m., crazy lady!

Today we were on the road by 9:45. We decided to go ahead and head up to Kalispell and check it out. We weren’t going to because of all the smoke, but we figured with the rain it might be better. It was a really pretty drive. I like Flathead Lake better than the two lakes I mentioned previously in Idaho. With the slope of the terrain you have much better views of it and the forest isn’t so dense, then with the Rockies in the background…stunning!

We drove 155 miles today and landed at 2:25. Do not believe the ads these places put out. The park we are in advertised how quiet it is…no highway noise, which is true, but it doesn’t mention the train or the fact that you are in a flight path from the Glacier International Airport…smile! We have full hookups and back to a field and we have a great view of the Flathead Range of the Rockies; it’s a shame that it is gray and cloudy, but it makes them look dark and mysterious. There is some smoke in the area but it isn’t too bad. We are staying 3 nights.

Our Albertan friends are wondering if we are coming up that far and the answer is, not this time. We didn’t really plan to and to come across the border we would have to empty out the freezer and I would have to get rid of my plants, so with better planning we’ll make it another time. We love this part of Montana and we expect to visit again and we do want to see Alberta and our friends there! I think they really wanted us right now because it is harvest time…smile.

The pictures of the river are along highway 200 and are of the Clark Fork River. At Plains we picked up highway 28 then 93 north and that hooked into 2 in Kalispell. The first pictures of Flathead Lake with the island are looking west to east across the width of one part of the lake. The rest are just as we traveled north alongside of it. The last pic is of our lovely view from our RV site.