It’s about half a day’s drive from where I sit now, on the tired carpet of a Ramada hotel room, to Seattle. Before you get started on us, it was 104 degrees yesterday and yes, we either could have camped or toughed it out and arrived home around midnight, we chose to do neither, opting for a good night’s sleep, a shower, and sanity. Our mosquito ridden campsites and truck stop showers have proven that we’re no sissies; our refusal to tough it out when there’s no need shows that we’re smart.
Yesterday we crossed the Rockies through Glacier National Park. It was a wildflower extavaganza and the sky was so bright, so blue. The road is a little asphalt shelf high along the mountains, every now and then there’s a stone archway to let a waterfall or creek continue downwards. We saw mountain goats finding their way up, up, up, at the pass, we saw more prairie dog hilarity (lord, those are funny critters) we saw flowers, flowers, flowers, did I mention the flowers?
Now, we’re back in the land of strip malls and traffic. And tonight, I’ll be in my own bed. We won’t have to pack up a wet tent, find our route for the day, figure out where to sleep, chase off bugs, wander around in the dark looking for the loo… it will be easy and sweet for the first night or two.
But after that, I am quite sure I will miss the road. There was not enough time for everything, anything, there never is. A day in Glacier? What kind of craziness is that? A week, that’s more like it. Flying through Montana’s abandoned little roadside towns? That makes the photographer in me die a little. Missing all the second hand stores where ukulele themed treasures languish, tossed out after someone’s uncle’s trip to Hawaii? Oh, just break my heart again, why don’t you?
Yes, I’m complaining even though the trip was the right side of perfect. Sure, there was a little bad weather, some ugly welts from biting bugs, and bad coffee. But there were no sour moments and wow, the US is a grand place to travel! Wow! You should go!
This afternoon, we’ll unpack the van and go for pho. Tomorrow morning, I will shuffle barefoot into my kitchen and make my tea exactly the way I like it. I will shop for vegetables and make big salads to counter the awesome greasy breakfasts and diner lunches of the road. I will sleep quiet in my own bed, in clean sheets. And in a day or two, I will wish, with no hesitation, that I was still traveling. Peter, Kelly? What about you?
I’m going to tell you a secret, right here on the Internet and blow Leif Pettersen’s cover. Sure, that blog of his is full of snark, but you know what? Leif is a nice guy. A really nice guy.
Leif and his friend Rachel met us on the corner outside his building, they had a pocket full of quarters for the meter and a parking space scoped out for us. We went for a walk through the urban planning wonder of Minneapolis’ skyways, had coffee, and wandered back to Leif’s rooftop patio where we talked Flip Cam, TwitterFone, and fame.
Here’s a short clip of Leif talking about the Minneapolis skyways.
We tossed most of our gear into the Routan last night – this morning, mostly because we discovered we had a shocking amount of extra space, we tossed in a few extra items – okay, I did. A pillow for camping nights, Original Sock Monkey because every trip needs a mascot, and, wow, you should see the technical gear we have. Kelly packed an extra computer, no kidding, so she could have a bigger screen for editing photos, Peter has two Canon cameras, one that got a lens on it that weighs about as much as the car. We have stuff stuck in wells under the floor, in the seat pockets, in the upper glove box – my binoculars are there, okay, they might be extra too – and oh, we’re going to have to really go through this thing when we give it back because there are so many places to hide stuff.
We watched the landscape change from suburban Seattle to sagebrush desert, and then there were lodgepole pines and crops, labeled with signs swinging on the fences – corn, wheat, potatoes, alfalfa. Dust devils spun up high and gray, farmhouses sat down in bright green patches in the dry gold fields.
We made two stops, the first at the Ginkgo Petrified Forest. Stumps of trees, now turned to stone, sit below protective grates – probably to keep people from taking pieces of them. It was hot, the air smelled strongly of sage. On the road below us, trailer trucks carried windmill blades to the windfarm a few miles to the west. Then we stopped in Moses Lake to pick up snacks and drinks and a big bag of ice. At the offramp, an unhappy looking man in his sixties sat on a crate holding a sign that said “Free Poetry” and maybe, “Jesus Loves You.” I reached into the ice chest and pulled out an apple and asked Kelly to roll down the window and give it to him. “Is that a Macintosh?” he asked. “You know, it’s not an apple unless it’s a Macintosh!” We all laughed and he did too. “Thank you for your kindness,” he said, and handed over two sheets of photocopied rhymes, full of religion and country and military endeavors past.
When we arrived at our stop for the night, our hostess, Tawni, was out front watering the lawn. “I’ve been tracking you!” she said, making us feel extremely pleased about our interactive map. She told us a bit about the history of the property – Grandma used to live in the biggest house, one of the cabins was a logging cabin that was moved, piece by numbered piece to this property on the edge of Lake Pend d’Oreille. We met Brent down on the dock told me about the music festival and the rail bridge and the boat he’s restoring. He pointed across the water to Sandpoint. “It’s 19 miles across the water to town, we used to boat across before we could drive. Town is trouble, my dad used to say, everything we need is right here. Now I tell my son that. He doesn’t believe me, of course.”
We ignored Brett and went into town anyway. I wanted coffee, because I knew there was a long evening ahead. Sandpoint has changed this the last time I was here, more than 20 years ago. It’s got twee little shops and a few high end gear stores, I remember fishing and hunting and hardware stores being more prominent and certainly there was no yoga studio, no restaurants proclaiming that they serve gluten free meals. There were Native Americans and guys in plaid, I don’t recall seeing quite so many tattooed 20 somethings in board shorts. There’s a marina and a lovely beach park, there’s a cupcake store and a few cafes, there’s winetasting – all this on the strip that I’m sure was bait and tackle and pizza joints and diners. Now Sandpoint feels like a beach town without a beach – you can rent a bike, buy a bikini, eat sushi and tapas, and pick up a second home on a few piney acres for 500k.
When I try to think about our evening, there’s too much going on for me to tease the stories out in any kind of manageable way. There was a boat ride, there was wine and cheese, there was a lovely dinner at 41 South, a lodge on the edge of the lake. There was an osprey nest on the rail bridge, there was an amazing story of our waiter’s death defying bicycle accident. Everyone told stories – of baking bread and earthquakes and old dogs and travel in France and pet rats and technology and localism … it was one of those evenings that’s a blur of scenery and laughing and the hospitality of strangers. I know that I should write you a review of the restaurant (lovely appetizers, didn’t love the entrees, slow service but what’s the hurry, stellar location) or the wine (I loved the both wines we drank on the boat, but the Chardonnay we had with dinner was too sweet for my taste and the red just wasn’t right with my food), but to do that is to focus on the details and not so much on the fact that Sandpoint right now is lovely, the people we met almost aggressively fit and attractive, and it was an awesome first day out.
