Fifth Day of our trip
Miles driven
today: 496.5; Total miles for Trip: 2,443.3
Gas Mileage
today 33.0 mpg, average of 30.6 mpg for trip
Total elapse
driving time 37 hours, 05 minutes, 51 seconds
Wake to full
sun, frost on the car overnight. The
mountain ring on the east delays this side of town from sunrise. Lady of the Rockies was fully lighted last
night. We could see it from our
room. Kind of eerie to see a bright white
specter on top of the mountain surrounded by total darkness. Lilacs love this cool climate and are profuse
in their blooms. Cold here but heading to eastern Washington today in the
80’s. Makes packing challenging with
best clothes. No rain forecast.
Heard from
Brenna. Quinn losing more teeth,
hopefully stops swallowing them. Tooth
Fairy will not visit her colon. Dean recovering from Strep throat, he burns it
at both ends, always on the go.
I-90 became
a four lane controlled access highway in 1971.
This same route was used for many decades before as it follows river
valleys. The Clark Fork River winds
lazily in the wide valley providing water for irrigation livestock and wheat
crops. We cross into Idaho and move into
Pacific Time. The valley gets tight with
high elevation passes. The trees become
the beautiful Lodge Pole Pines covering all the high rolling hill valleys; the
soil is thin and rocky; a lot of logging in this area but national forest land
seems untouched. This is an old gold
mining area and now requires land recovery.
We stop off at the tiny town of Wallace in the tight valley. Very cute old town with fun shops and
restaurants. We are told this area is
the largest silver extraction in the world bar none. Our Idaho time is brief as we cross the
narrow panhandle. We come to Coeur
d’Alene Lake, a massive body of water surrounded by mountains; the city of
Coeur d’Alene is a large population sitting on the northwest border ID and
WA. Over the border Spokane WA nearly
blends with Coeur d’Alene city. Outside
Spokane the land is very dry, the grasses are already brown, even though it’s
spring and rocks poke up from the ground.
We pass into very arid farming area.
There are occasional spring fed lakes and without that water source
nothing would grow. The wind is driving
dust devils, some the size of a tornado.
As we move toward the Columbia River the land flattens and thousands of
acres of crops are grown with irrigation:
fence line signs tell us the veggies, fruits and livestock grains that
are being grown. There is effort to
protect the Columbia basin with agricultural methods; some crops are
organic. We drop down into the awesome
Columbia River; the rock formations, canyons and river should be listed as
world wonder. This area grows mostly
fruit and grapes for wine on every slope that can be developed. Volcanic activity over time contributes to the
soil. We are warming into high 80’s as
we enter Wenatchee where we check into Fairfield Marriot where we have stayed
before. We are on the east side of the
river and travel over to the west side where the historic area and businesses
are located. We liked McGlinn’s
restaurant from the past. It’s an
historic building that offers outdoor dining in ‘shack’. The food is very good and excellent
service. We have seen 3 JoAnn Fabric
stores, all closed, so sad. What a
waste.
On to
Bellingham tomorrow. Onto Ak ferry day
after.
We are
thankful for good weather and safe driving.
Nighty night.
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