Sunny Days, Smooth Sailing

"Coming out of Helena into the mountains yesterday was absolutely beautiful," said Andy as we drove toward Idaho, "and now this morning from Missoula is equally spectacular. How did we ever schedule such gorgeous weather?"

Douglas fir trees blanketed slope after slope as we snaked along the Regis River through the Bitterroot Range. "I don't see very many dead pine trees here either," I told him.

"That's because these aren't lodgepole pine. They aren't affected by the beetle. We've gone more than 5,000 miles, and this is the most trees we have seen in one place since we left West Virginia," he added.

Accented with golden aspen along the river, the deep green mountainsides piled layer on layer at every bend in the road. We turned off the GPS and left I-90 at White Pine Scenic Byway, following the Coeur d'Alene River. Logging trucks zipped past at 50 m.p.h. near Cave Lake, leaning right and left around the curves. Then Coeur d'Alene Lake came into view between the pines. Every turn offered glimpses of sparkling blue waters.

"Some of the houses are huge," I said to Andy as we drove the entire lake road. "I'm only disappointed that so much of it is private. It would be nice to stroll along the lake."

Coeur d'Alene City Park provided the opportunity for a walk along the shore. There, a couple from LA took pictures for us with the bronze statue of Mudgy the Moose and Millie the Mouse. We strolled along the floating boardwalk, climbed the bridge, walked through the hotel gardens and watched the few boats still out on the lake. Later Lynn, a volunteer at the visitor center, told us about her return to this beautiful resort Mecca from Florida and North Carolina.

Sadly, hundreds of For Sale signs marked houses and lots on both sides of the road as it wound in and out of the trees around the lake. "With the market down and real estate worth less, people can't afford second homes," said Andy.

Nowhere has this been more apparent in our travels than here at Coeur d'Alene Lake.

Traffic mounted as we approached Spokane mid-afternoon. Temperatures in the high 70's at dinnertime gave us a chance to walk downtown in shirtsleeves to see the waterfalls. It was a sunny day on the water from Montana to Washington.