Day 18: Gresham, OR to Coeur d'Alene, ID

Day 18, Wednesday: Gresham, OR to Coeur d'Alene, ID

KM start: 163,002 Km

Trip Meter: 6,545 km

Time Driven: 10:30am - 6pm

Saturday morning we sluggishly got up - Paul had kindly volunteered to make breakfast while Louanne and Steve were packing up their car for a camping trip at Lake Chelan. 

Then Paul found guns. 

Can you guess who ended up making breakfast?

It was though because Steve had provided venison sausage, which was very tasty!

Then we all headed out on the road, on the same beautiful Oregon highway that we'd began our trip on leaving Steve and Louanne's wedding. 

We stopped at a rest stop to get a photo. 

We asked a stranger to help. 

I guess he thought he'd take a candid one first.

I don't know if you can tell how crazy windy it was, though by the looks of my hair you should be able to get a hint. It was very windy!

We passed the arm of one of the wind turbine things - we've seen these driving all across America, we must have seen at least 20 in our time on the road. 

I love this shot of crossing the Columbia River

And into Washington, feeling more and more at home. 

Also we found Stonehenge in Washington. Weird

It was dry and hot and construction season - we got stuck at two different check points for construction, each time for like an hour. Thankfully we both had books and weren't in a rush. 

Oh and on our drive we stopped in the Kennewick Walmart again, where we'd stopped at th start of our trip...it was fun retracing our steps!

We also saw a sign that said:

"What happens in Vegas,

Happens in Spokane"

We laughed so hard. Definitely not true though.

We stopped in Spokane Valley to go to Dress Barn and I picked up brown and orange skinny jeans - I'm excited to join the colored skinny jean trend! Paul was mostly puzzled by the whole thing. And it is true what the tea towel we saw in New Orleans said, "Shopping with your husband is like hunting with the Game Warden"

Then we crossed into Idaho - back when we'd been on route to Montana we'd gone through Idaho and been so impressed with Coeur d'Alene, wishing we could stop at the lake. 

So we decided to make that our pit stop for our final night in America before driving into Alberta.

We were once again impressed with the town

We arrived around 6pm with no plans of where to stay and no idea how to start. The Tourist Information place had closed and we were just hoping for helpful people. Thankfully we found a guy who suggested a camping spot right on the lake, just past the town. So we headed off hoping he wasn't crazy and that this space existed. 

Thank goodness it did, and this was our view of the lake as we drove off the highway and towards the camping space. 

We pulled up at Lake Coeur d'Alene Camping Resort and were very impressed. Wifi, pool, hot tub, near enough to the lake to go fishing, quiet but filled with families - we decided for sure we'd stay there! We were all set to pay $27 to camp for the night when Paul pointed out the adorable cabins for rent, only $61. Since it was our last night just the two of us, we thought we'd pick the picturesque, romantic spot. They gave us the "honeymooners" cabin. It was just back off the main area and up a hill. Much more private than the rest. It was so cozy. 

Look at that swing! Wonderful, isn't it?

As soon as our stuff was in, Paul took off to go fishing as the sun set and I sat out on the swing, feet up on the cooler editing pictures and writing blog posts. It was lovely. 

We cooked our own food just outside on the table - it was still almost as rustic as camping. I made us a great dinner, we poured ourselves a drink, I learned to pop popcorn on the stovetop and we watched TV on Netflix in bed. It was a perfect date night. 

And later that night we got to add another funny, Paul does something weird in his sleep, story to the list. Now keep in mind we were in a tiny cabin in the woods and when we’d gone to bed we’d locked the cabin door. A few hours into sleeping Paul woke me up by grabbing me really tightly with both arms, pulling me really close to him and whispering with intense urgency into my ear, “There’s something in the cabin with us.”

Well this was terrifying. I started to respond to ask what but he cut me off, “shh it can hear you.” Yikes.

I laid there rigid as a board, terrified,  trying to figure out what we were going to do, as Paul held me super alert and ready to pounce on an intruder….after about 20 minutes though I realized Paul had started snoring. He’d falled asleep. This made me wonder if he’d ever been awake and if there was indeed an intruder in our cabin. I found his flashlight and looked around. Nothing.  Of course. Classic sleeping Paul.

I was cold though so I got up, turned on the lights, made double sure there was nothing in the cabin, turned up the heat and got back into bed. The heat must work really hard in this cabin because within an hour it was BOILING in there. And I was awoken by Paul shouting at me that the entire cabin was melting and our bed was floating in lava. This time I was awake enough to know it was a dream – I got up, turned on the lights, woke Paul up for real, turned down the heat and we both sat outside for a few minutes until our body temperatures could return to normal.

It was quite the adventure. Being married to Mr. Paul Morgan is never boring, that’s for sure.