2015 Road Trip: Part 35 (WA-ID)

Washington to Idaho (the panhandle this time)
Day 51
6.3.15

I present some photos of our campsite in Randle, WA, near the strange cow.  The biggest problem about this site was how rocky the soil was and how this made staking tents challenging.  However, all was good because we had the lime green folding chair to lift our spirits.

Car, frying pan, grass, tailgate.

This day was more of a distance-covering day instead of a sight-seeing one, so we went after I-90 eastbound through eastern Washington, which we discovered to be an awful lot like eastern Oregon.  It's very dry because the Cascades steal all the moisture coming east.  With Idaho in our sights, we entered the beautiful area of Spokane...during rush hour.

Coeur d'Alene, the eastern gateway to the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho and Montana!  We popped off the highway for a bit to go see Lake Coeur d'Alene.  It was finally sunny, now that I was away from the coast where I was hoping to see some sun.

Lake Coeur d'Alene

Just past the lake, some passing storms doused the air with water droplets and made a cool rainbow.

Rainbow

Using the trusty free campsites website, we had read about a place right on the border between Idaho and Montana called Lookout Pass.  It was supposedly under a mile from the highway - just get off the exit and drive up a dirt road to a ski area.  I believe we saw the incorrect dirt road, since we saw no evidence of any primitive camping sites, however we did make it to the top of the ski slope.  The road was perilously steep in certain parts, but nothing Wombat couldn't handle.  At the top, there were several ski lifts and a few buildings that cater to skiers in the winter, and the verdict was to drive back down a little bit to a flat-ish spot we spotted on the way up.

Wombat posing in the mountains

Things got crazy while setting up camp.  Emma's shelter required two trees to tie the rope to, but there was no ideal spot, so we used to car as one tree.  From there, her shelter and the dinner canopy was tied. Consider this Shelter 2.0.

The sun peeked through the clouds just before setting as we were cooking dinner, and we realized what a beautiful spot we had chosen for the night.  Yes, in the middle of a ski slope.

One must celebrate the small things in life:

Root Beer

The clouds blew off as dusk fell, and we were able to see Venus and Jupiter in the sky.  (Venus is visible in the photo below).  I had been watching them move slowly night after night for the past few weeks.  It's one of those things you get to noticing when you are away from your standard daily routine, e.g. on a road trip.

The night brought on some chilly temperatures, likely because we were up around 5000 feet or so.  Nonetheless, I think this was one of my favorite camping spots on the trip.

This day, we drove 436 miles, bringing to total up to 10,501.

Day 51: 436 miles