I-Da-Ho!

We left Oregon at the crack of noon to head to our stop that night, our friend’s farm in northern Idaho.   It was hard to say good bye to the Davies, they are wonderful hosts and we had lots of fun with them. The drive was uneventful.  We crossed the cascades and I was once again amazed how the weather changed.  You go from the cool pine forests of the Pacific Northwest to the high desert again, like in eastern Oregon.   From there we were on all small state highways.  We were surprised at how much wheat was being grown.    Again, we entered Idaho thinking we might see potato fields but all you could see in any direction was rolling hills of amber waves of grain.  

We were staying that night with our friends Jessica and Chris.  They are CBF alumni who thanks to social media, we’ve kept in touch with over the years.  They moved to Idaho for Chris to get his PHD and have been there ever since.  The 40 acre farm is a new adventure for them.  We are their first visitors from Annapolis!  We arrived around dinner time and the kids were excited to see the chickens in the driveway as we pulled up.  Bella especially had a love/hate relationship with them as they chased her around.  Bella was particularly enthralled with Penguin, the rooster. In her words: “I like him despite the fact he  scratched me thrice”.  Kellen was super excited to find out their older son, Sasha, played Minecraft.  They spent the evening hanging out and playing while the adults caught up.  

We stayed up late and then the next morning Jessica had some fresh peach scones and fresh local fruit for us.  It was so much better than anything you get at the store.  After breakfast we took the kids to feed the chickens and then we took a tour of the farm.  They are still trying to figure out the business of how their farm will operate.  It is a beautiful piece of land.  They have an orchard started and a kitchen garden.  We also got to pick delicious fresh strawberries from their strawberry patch.  They are off to a good start with the farm.  One thing I didn’t expect was to fall in love.  They have a new puppy named River.  River is an English Shepard.  She is beautiful, friendly and sweet.  I even let her lick my face, something I never do with dogs.  If we ever decide to get a dog, I have found my breed.  We hated to say goodbye but we had about 7 hours of driving to get to Glacier so we set off.

We drove up to Coeur D’Alene and drove into town for lunch.  It is clearly a tourist/vacation town, with lots of shops  and restaurants downtown by the lake.  There were lots of hung-over looking young people out on the streets as we drove around.  We parked and found a place to for lunch.  We then drove up to the Safeway for our last big grocery purchase of the trip.  

Leaving the city, it was straight up into the mountains.  I took over driving and got to experience the pain of going 40 miles an hour with the gas pedal to the floor as the Sunstar tried to tackle those climbs.  It took awhile to get over the mountains and into Montana but then it was off the interstate again.  It was all small state roads the rest of the way, luckily since it was Montana, the speed limit was still pretty high (65-70).  I continued to drive until almost hitting a deer, at that point I was ready to give Greg the reigns, especially after our debate of whether or not I missed a turn (I did not according to his GPS). 

We finally entered the towns around Glacier around 7:30.  It’s different than Yellowstone.  There is a pretty big town right outside the park.  I think that is because the railroad came into Glacier, so the towns grew up around them over the years. Plus there is a big lake outside the park so it’s clearly a tourist destination of its own.  Yellowstone doesn’t have that.  We entered the park before dark and were happy to find out it was only a few miles to our campground.  We got in, and ran into the campground host as we entered our loop.   She offered to let us borrow some firewood for the night and told us we had the nicest site in the loop (this was one where I was able to book a specific site, so I knew it was good!).  We had a waterfront site on Lake McDonald, so we immediately went down to check out the lake.  It was beautiful.  We then made some quick dinner and lit a campfire for smores.  A good end to the day.