Day 5: Into Each Life a Heat Wave Must Fall

So, as great as yesterday was, today was its inverse. It started off great, with a 2-mile walk along the Walla Walla River at our state park campsite. Mixed in a little jogging, even, to give Nick some run time (he misses his daily ball-chasing run at home). Beautiful morning segued into a very scenic drive. We have now completed approximately 1200 miles of our trip, for those of you who are into data.

Boy, are we becoming fans of US highways (not interstates). Today we took US 12 to US 95 all the way up to Coeur d’Alene. Gorgeous Lewis and Clark country. The whole way was a designated scenic route, and it was clear why. Besides the big rivers and mountains, the rest of the scenery was gorgeous: wildflowers in 2 shades of purple, pink, white, yellow, and red. Rolling fields of barley, lentils, and peas, of all things. I had no idea that there were so many inland ports on these rivers to move all the grains and legumes to the Pacific.

Got to Coeur d’Alene in early afternoon, but it is TOO HOT to do anything here. For any of us. ;-( Pavement is scorching, RV is heating up too quickly to leave Nick inside. We left him in the van for 10 minutes to pick up maps at the visitor center and the vehicle got quite warm in that short time. No big shade trees here, like in Walla Walla yesterday, which made walking around there bearable for everyone. It’s the first hot day of the year, here, and apparently very unusual. The city and the lake are beautiful, though—the whole town looks to be out on it or next to it. But we’re out on I-90 at a Motel 6—yee haw. Well, there’s free HBO and A/C.

We ventured out in late afternoon and tried putting on the generator in the RV so we could run into Hudson's Hamburgers (100+year old place written up in Wall Street Journal, Sunset magazine, USA Today, and our favorite, Jane and Michael Stern's Roadfood column in Gourmet magazine). The place was a real throwback to another era, but I'll stick with Quincy Maid-Rites --another almost 100-year old recipe, mentioned favorably by our hero, Alton Brown, in last year's Feasting on Asphalt show.

When we got back to the RV (after an elapsed 15 minutes), Nick was cowering in the front seat, afraid of the LOUD and vibrating generator that was keeping him cool. So much for that option! So we traveled around the lake for a bit, found a fairly shady path, and strolled in the 98 degree heat. We are now hunkered down in the Motel 6 with Safeway salads. Such is life.

Tomorrow and Monday are expected to be as hot. We're debating our strategy. Stay tuned.
Think we'll sleep maybe OK tonight, since almost every room in this motel has a dog or two in it. I won't be so worried that he'll bark and disturb anyone. We met our neighbors and they have 5-month old lab puppies, so we've all agreed to have lots of tolerance for each other. Nick is just beautifully behaved in the campgrounds and not so much in the motels, and we finally figured out why. He is completely entertained with bugs and nature at the campground. A motel room is b-o-r-i-n-g, so he has to cause some trouble to be entertained. Ahh. So that's it. Another mystery solved.