Friday, September 04, 2015

NW Day Seven: Rocks for the Win



Once again, we were nearly an hour late getting on the road this morning. This is a distressing trend. There’s a snowball effect from getting in late the night before. We get in late, so we are tired and don’t do some of the things that need to be done, like downloading photos from the camera and the phones. So that gets pushed off till the morning. Then morning comes and everyone is still tired, so we lag a little in getting ready….and then we’re running late ant the schedule is skewed. And then travel time between destinations is longer than google maps told us, so we’re even later, and then we get in late and we’re tired, and the cycle just repeats.

All whining aside, we finally left the state of Montana and drove into Idaho.

 Our first stop of the day was lunch, which was a competition bbq team with a roadside food truck and picnic tables. The owner came out and chatted with us (after the Jedi had complemented the staff and told them we were KCBS judges.)


After that, we drove over to a local park in Couer D’Alene…


with trail access to Tubb’s Hill. 

This was a stop that Boybot was really looking forward to. One of his requests for the trip was a place where we didn’t have to stay on the trail and he could just go climb on some rocks.


Also, it seems that any location he can walk away from with a pocket full of rocks is a winner in his book.



Once we had climbed, taking the not-even-a-trail less traveled, to the top of the hill, 
 
we took some pictures....



headed down and hit the road again.



Today was a long drive day, eight and a half hours, plus the stops.

Our dinner stop was scheduled in Roslyn WA, where the TV show Northern Exposure was filmed. We did stop there for some fun photos.


 
But the Brick, where we had thought to eat, was a 21+ establishment. (A piece of info that would have been more helpful if they had put it on their website.)

That was ok, because we were really debating eating dinner here, or waiting till we had crossed the Cascades. It was just before dark, and we wanted to get as much mountain time driving done before dark as possible.

It turned out, we drove into a major downpour, so dark descended immediately. For two hours or more, the Jedi drove in winding mountainous roads in the dark, in pouring rain, through more road construction.

We stopped at a little truck stop in NorthBend(?) for dinner. Boybot had requested breakfast for dinner, and that’s what this 24/7 dinner could deliver. The Jedi said, that was the most filling meal for eight dollars he had ever eaten. On the way out, I noticed a sign that said that the local wild elk herd numbered between three and six hundred. 

Really late getting into Seattle, but everything we owned was dirty, so the kids and I sorted all the laundry, and I pushed one load through the machines. The laundry room closed at midnight, and I just got my load transferred into the drier before that deadline. I also learned that even though I didn’t have enough socks and underwear to make a whole load, or enough jeans to make another whole load, that it wasn’t really a good idea to combine those two loads, especially when two of the Jedi’s jeans shorts had never been laundered before.

Yeah.

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