We've spent the last few days getting ready for our Spring Break trip out to the Oregon Coast. We have a house rented at Newport, and are packed up and ready to go. Though the preparations were somewhat last minute, we were mostly ready to go. Last night Hailey and Annelise had dance class. After dance we went out for something to eat. Hailey's friend Emily, who is in the same dance class, came along with her Mom. Margarit's sister Natalia is visiting from California, and she came along as well. By the time we got home, there was little time left for packing. I checked over all the stuff that the girls had packed for themselves, and made some adjustments. It's funny how they remember things like shorts and bathing suits for a March trip to the Pacific coast, but forget things like enough socks, warm jackets, jeans...!! I got them sorted out and then quickly went over my own stuff, mostly photographic, before turning in.
We got up in the morning, and I hoped to hit the road by about 8:00AM.... somewhat optimistic for an entourage of four girls...!! But, we were up pretty much on time, and tried to start loading all of our gear into the truck. Margarit had loaned her SUV to her sister, and had been driving my truck during the week. That didn't permit me any time to get the truck organized beforehand. This morning when I went to check everything and get organized I discovered that I had misplaced the registration and the 2015 license plate sticker. After frantically tearing apart the truck and then my home office I eventually gave up and we had no choice but to transfer everything over to my work truck. Despite all that we managed to hit the road by about 8:30. A brief stop for fuel and we were on our way....
We travelled south on Highway 2, bypassed Calgary, and headed West towards Banff. I quickly realized that I had forgotten my National Park pass in the other truck, but as it turned out we didn't need to it just pass through the park. After entering Banff National Park we turned off at Castle junction and headed up and over the divide into Kootenay National Park. We passed through Radium Hot Springs and continued south to Cranbrook. From there we travelled south to Moyie, Yahk and on to the US border crossing at Kingsgate. This port of entry is pretty quiet and it was quick and easy to enter the USA. The border guard was quite human and we were not subjected to the usual arrogance and attitude that we have become accustomed to.
We travelled south through the Idaho panhandle. We made a fuel stop just outside of Bonners Ferry and found that diesel was $2.69US per gallon. Factoring conversion to the US gallon and the currency exchange between the 80 cent Canadian dollar, this works out to slightly less that what we paid back at home. There was a really cool antique store across the street from the service station and I just had to stop and let Margarit poke around in all the old junk. She was in her glory, and the girls bought a few small items.
We rolled on further south to Sandpoint and Cour d'Alene before eventually turning east into Washington state and Spokane. This was where we had planned to stop for the night. We tried to check into several hotels and quickly discovered that ALL of them were full. The NCAA college basketball tournament known as March Madness was going on in the area and there were a lot of people in attendance. There was also some sort of big volleyball tournament going on. We eventually gave up and continued on through Spokane. It was a good thing that we had gained an hour when we crossed over into the Pacific time zone so it was really not as late as it felt to us. We continued on past Spokane for about an hour, and then tried again to find a hotel room in Ritzville. This place was also almost full, but we managed to get the last two rooms. We probably could have squeezed all five of us into a room with two beds, but that was not an option, as there were no double rooms left. So we took the last two rooms and settled down. By this point it was about 9:30 our time, and we had been on the road for over 12 hours. We settled down into the two rooms, had a gourmet dinner at the gas station McDonalds across the parking lot, and settled down for the night. The upside is that we are now only about 7 hours away from our destination on the Oregon Coast so tomorrow will be a piece of cake. We are trying to settle down and unwind so that we can continue the trek in the morning.
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