Journey Day12 - Whitefish to Priest River

[catchup; photos added 25/08/16]

The Best Western Rocky Mountain Lodge was a nice hotel. It is very new and the staff are very friendly. We were in an annex, which we expected, which was more like a two story Motel but a short walk gave all the facilities of the main hotel. A good sleep here and the breakfast selection was excellent.

We left at 10 in 66F knowing it would get a lot hotter. This is day 1 of 2 of a 500 mile transit to North Cascades so all about driving. We started with a visit to Safeway just around the corner for a lunchtime salad bowl and to fill up with gas.

Practiced standard packing 

Whitefish is, as I said in my last post, a tidy affluent town and before hitting the road we visited the City Beach on the big lake. Small parking are but already the beach was well occupied with families. Out on the water someone was riding on a water jet platform, The effect was as if a Marvel character with two jets of water shooting out of their feet. The instructor was sitting on a Jet Ski which appeared to be supplying the water jet via a pipe.

Leaving the city we passed many Golf courses and headed along long straight highways through woodland. The terrain felt like the foot hills of higher mountains.

At Eureka we were only 6 miles from Canada and diverted North just for the sake of it. Wee didn’t cross the border although we technically could have visa wise and car rental but didn’t want to risk a hold up.

Further on we pass irrigated productive wide valleys then up into wooded hills again. We passed by many lakes and rivers, though always behind trees.

Around lunch time we arrived at Lake Koocanusa and a spectacular bridge which had apparently been awarded ‘most beautiful long span bridge’.

The bridge seems to be on quite short pillars but was actually build before the valley was flooded with the construction of the Libby Dam downstream. The information boards showed pictures from the build and the short pillars we see are only the tips of massive tall structures.

Remember the words from Convoy by C.W.McCall, "In a Kenworth pullin' logs"? Well, this is a Kenworth pullin' logs:

We continued another 30 miles plus along the lake down to the Libby Dam itself and picnicked in it’s visitor area on a shaded table at 2pm.

Not long after lunch we crossed the State line from Montana into Idaho which had two significant impacts. The first was that the speed limit dropped from 70 to 55 which was disappointing and the second was that it suddenly became an hour earlier as we passed from Mountain to Pacific time.

At Bonners Ferry we stopped by the visitor centre to collect our free state map of Idaho even though we were only passing through a finger of it that pushed up between Washington and Montana to the Canadian border.

Pushing on as driving was getting tiresome we carried on through 99F to our destination, Priest River.

We found our Motel easily as it’s No1 of 1 in Priest River. Checking in and going to our room we were delighted. Being a little cheaper and a ‘motel’ we hoped it was ok as reviews were positive but it was great. A large comfortable room, Wi-Fi, air-con, fridge with freezer, 2 chairs and outside seat in the shade overlooking the river. They even offered free continental breakfast when we had expected we may be self catering in the morning. Very chuffed.

We settled on a swing seat looking over the river and drank 2 of our cool beers in the warmth and chilled for a while. Later on we walked a few hundred yards to a Mexican restaurant which also proved to be excellent and friendly. Priest River may be sort of nowhere but it’s being good to us.

Back, to full as usual, to plan and organise including backup photo’s and work on blog.

Today’s route:

Statistics: Miles today: 252; Miles so far: 2409; Fuel added so far: 85.7 US gals; States: Montana, Idaho; Time Zones: Mountain (UK-7), Pacific (UK -8)

Track since Journey Start: