Kalispell and Whitefish 8-21-07

Today we drove around Kalispell and Whitefish checking out the other RV Parks in the area. We like the one we are in the best. I found a metaphysical book store and browsed around and talked shop with the owner. We did the Walmart thing and then we drove up to Whitefish. It was slow going on highway 93…BIG construction, they are building a 93 bypass around Kalispell. We drove around Whitefish a bit, had lunch, stopped at Safeway and then headed back home on highway 2. The clouds were really low most of the day, but they were moving out by dark. This first picture is of Whitefish.

We had a lovely evening with our friends Don and Tracy, they ran the best restaurant ever in Chester and when Don decided to try his hand at retailing he moved into my space and bought a lot of my fixtures when I closed my business.

As these pictures show they have a lovely home with stunning views of the mountains and on clear days can see into Glacier National Monument. They have a great garden and their neighbors across the street are trees and wildlife. I wish I had thought to take a picture from the road so you could see their entire property. The inside of their home is warm and cozy and we recognized a few pieces of furniture from the store. Some of you might recognize Don’s bar if you study on it! Tracy is 25 weeks pregnant and doing great! They are having a girl. Hmmm, I forgot to ask if they had her name picked out yet, hopefully its better than Dingus or whatever the name was that they had given their cardboard baby.

Tracy fixed us a wonderful dinner a la Creekside Grill; grilled garlic pork loin, yummy carrots, garlic Yukon Gold mashed potatoes and grilled garlic bread…YUMMY. And Goddesses, eat your hearts out…she made my favorite, Chocolate Decadence for dessert. I insisted on a moment of silence upon my first bite…heaven! A home made latte with my little slice of heaven, did I mention it was the best and the latte was in a Fiestaware cup! I miss my Fiestaware, when I am near a Macy's I go into the dish department to visit the Fiestaware until someday when mine can come out of storage.

So thanks again you guys, it was great seeing you both again and looking relaxed and happy! Oh, the dog is Huckleberry who is ten now and moving a little slower. The picture I took of Don and Tracy on their deck washed out the mountains behind them which you can see in the picture before that.

Bellville, Ohio tornados 8-21-07

Today we are scoping out Kalispell and Whitefish and having a visit with friends we knew from Chester, so more tomorrow.

In case anyone was following the severe weather through Ohio, Lori’s place was left high and wet and all in one piece. They had severe rain in her area that caused a lot of flooding and several small tornados touched down right in Bellville. A house lost a roof and there were a lot of downed trees. Lori lounged in her basement watching T.V. while the storm raged on; Mike stayed upstairs watching the storm from the windows…crazy man. Lori’s place is out of town and up a slope from the road so they didn’t have a problem, but people in town had it bad…flooded streets mean flooded sewer systems and flooded basements…yuck. We were there this time last year and we are glad we weren’t there this time! Scary. The local volunteer fire department did manage to take out seven fence posts and land in a friends field and were firmly stuck; took a corner to fast. Sad.

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.

More Montana 8-17-07

Had a great night, it was really dark! The river and trains kept it from being to quiet!

The smoke had lifted out a little this morning. Enjoyed watching the sun come over the top of the mountain. As I was getting ready for the day, Larry discovered we had a stowaway in one of the outside compartments…a mouse. Of course it is in a compartment that is long and has the water tank in it that the mouse can hide behind, so I guess it will be sticky mouse tape or de-con for the poor thing.

I forgot to mention that we were off the grid here at the Kootenai River. No phone and no satellite, felt kind of weird, but nice too. Being in the wilds of Montana with big mountains and lots of tall trees who knows when we’ll get back online, you all will have a lot of reading to do!

We hit the road just after 10 and hit the town of Troy soon after. We stopped to fuel up and stop at a store for milk and mouse begone. We also stopped at a visitor center and gathered up some material and Larry spent some time talking to the lady there. She had lived in the area for 41 years and she was telling him how Coeur d’Alene, Kalispell and Whitefish were just all little teeny towns. Now she says CDA just spreads over into Spokane and that this whole corner of Montana into Kalispell and Whitefish has gone crazy too, this year she says the real estate has gone through the roof and looking at a little real estate flyer we would have to agree. Ridiculous prices for OLD houses. Before leaving Troy Larry remembered to get gas for the generator, we haven’t used it in awhile, but boondocking like we have been it is nice to have for backup in case we don’t get enough sun to charge up our batteries. So we didn’t leave Troy until after 11:30, partly because it took us awhile to decide which way we were heading. Hard to enjoy the scenery through lots of smoke!

This part of Montana is beautiful! After leaving Troy, on down the road we caught highway 56 down to highway 200 east. We pulled into another National Forest Service campground west of Noxon. We found a really nice site but just in time, by early evening it was pretty much full. There are a bunch of people together in one loop having a wedding at the day use area, complete with a horse drawn buggy. We got in at 12:40 and traveled 48 miles. We were very surprised to find we had cell service, but so far no satellite. Larry tried hard, but couldn’t get a shot through the trees! We are staying here 2 nights so we don’t have to try and find someplace on a Saturday night.

The trees here are a richer green and there are a lot of cedars. The creeks and rivers are so clear you should be able to see a fish, but so far we haven’t see any! The yellow jackets here at the campground were annoying and forced us to stay inside when eating.

Wilds of Montana 8-16-07

This was posted on Sat. the 18th at a wifi hotspot.
These first pictures are of our sunset last night, spectacular with the smoke in the air!

We hit the road around ten leaving the little burg of Harrison. Drove up the east shore of Coeur d’Alene Lake, the road along there is about 30-35 miles long. It reminded us a lot of our old Lake Almanor!

We went into CDA to check out an RV Park but we weren’t impressed so we pressed on. CDA is over 35,000 people and growing fast, lots of lloooonnnngggg traffic signals and traffic. It is forested though and pretty, what we saw of it. We saw an RV Park north of Coeur d’Alene on 95 that we would try the next time we were ever through here.

This train raced us across Lake Pend Oreille on our way into Sandpoint. Looks like a neat little town, touristy, but had signs that it favored walkers…yay, our kind of town! We didn’t feel like trying to find a place to park our rig and having lived in a summer tourist town for 14 years we decided to keep on going and visit it another time.

We kept going north through Bonners Ferry and then picked up highway 2 east into Montana. It was very smoky and we lost an hour, back into Mountain Time. We stopped for some lunch and then continued on and pulled into the first National Forest Service campground we came across. We found a long, gorgeous site on the Kootenai River just waiting for us. It took some maneuvering so we could stay hooked up and open the slide without crashing into a tree. Our tires were just on the edge of the pavement but the slide opened o.k. and we were able to get leveled. An unfortunate mouse was flattened by the trailer tires, he should have been sleeping somewhere. We landed about 4 mountain time and had gone 145 miles and are just west of Troy, MT.

We spent the evening enjoying the light on the water (what there was through the smoke, light I mean), trains and watching a crazy boater struggling to motor his way up river…had to take a few stabs at it from different directions through the rapids. So much for peacefulness, there was a train track following the river across the canyon; at least he didn’t have to toot his horn! We were able to eat our dinner outside…heavenly!

Harrison, Idaho 8-15-07

Yesterday it was hot and smoky. We did our yoga, took a walk and did laundry. The first picture shows us on the right in the center and the 18 wheeler going by on the highway. Fortunately the highway was mostly quiet after 11 p.m. Most of the RV Park was back behind us in the trees. It was a beautiful park, but hadn’t been kept up. Needs some work.

Today we were awakened just after 5 a.m. by our neighbors getting ready to hit the road. Anyone who leaves an RV park before 7 a.m. should be shot. When the rigs are so close together no matter how quiet you try to be you are going to be heard. They pulled out at 5:30 and that was it for sleep. At six the mill right next to the park fires up for the day and by then traffic is going by on the highway, but we were leaving today so no problem!

We had a good breakfast at the little café right in the park and then we hit the road at 10. As you can see from the pictures of Clearwater River there is lots of smoke. We finally found the forests again for awhile and then crested a pass and came out into wheat fields…thought we were in the Midwest somewhere! A lot of the nation’s wheat is grown up here…who knew? We have yet to see a field of potatoes, but I think they are in the southeast part of the state, but maybe I don’t know what a field of potato plants really looks like…hmmm.

We traveled 157 miles today and landed at Harrison City Park right alongside Coeur d’Alene Lake, CDA Lake to the locals. It is a ridiculous $28 a night for water and electric and other than the lake being right here, there is one block to the town, so they can charge an arm and a leg for their lake view!

Other than no coastline Idaho looks like how we imagine California must have looked 50 years ago, lots of farming, rivers and mountains, but not the population that California has now. They even have a few wineries “cropping” up…tee hee.

We stopped at a grocery store along the way for a chocolate cake for my birthday, but the only chocolate cake they had had white frosting on it…sacrilege! I chose a chocolate cream pie, which will be refreshing on this really hot day.

So as the sun sets this evening across Coeur d’Alene Lake we will be sitting outside at our picnic table eating pieces of chocolate cream pie…WHAT A LIFE!

Kamiah, ID 8-13-07

We had a very quiet night in our field. When we got up, the smoke from the nearest fires was laying on the mountain tops. We hit the road after toast this morning around 9:30. We drove north on highway 95. The most surprising thing about Idaho to us is these brown, treeless mountains. We had pictured unending forests which is not true as you can see by these pictures. The rivers are gorgeous, so big, wide and fast moving.

When we crossed the Salmon River at White Bird we passed back into Pacific time, a surprise because it seems odd that the northern panhandle of Idaho is a different time zone than the southern/major part of the state. Most of these pictures have smoke in the sky from the forest fires. The smoke became worse as we came north.

At Grangeville we got off of 95 and picked up highway 13 to highway 12. As soon as we got off of 95 we started climbing and ended up in forest and descended quite a steep grade and when we got to the bottom we stopped and had breakfast beside a branch of the Clearwater River and we followed it up to Kamiah where we are staying the next two nights. We traveled about 123 miles today and are staying in a Passport America park, but for us to get satellite we are right alongside the highway…at least it isn’t a very busy highway. It is pretty smoky here and there has been a new start just over the hill on the Indian Reservation.

After we got settled we drove into Kamiah and fueled up the truck and while we were sitting there while the truck was guzzling we saw smoke up in town…a brush fire. The local department sounded off while we were at the post office picking up our mail. We went up to scope it out and the local department wasn’t doing very well. There is a Forest Service Station in town and soon we saw a unit from New Mexico show up, we’ll find out tomorrow if they saved the town. We found Kamiah city park right on the river and it had 5 RV sites with water and electric for 5 bucks and we could have stayed there for two nights. Oh well, where we are isn’t so bad. Eleven dollars a night for full hook-ups and there is a laundry so we can do that too if we need to.

Oh, Idaho’s sales tax is six percent and they tax everything! Food, camping sites, fuel, everything!