After a few days at the St Mary's River B&B visiting friends, I woke up to this reminder on my windshield. It was time to head south.

I crossed the border at Kingsgate, south of Cranbrook and was pleased to find a polite and professional customs officer, unlike some recent ones I have had occasion to deal with. We lost a milk crate of firewood, but I’m sure my chainsaw can replenish that somewhere along the way.

Once across the border into Idaho, it finally started to seem like I was really on a road trip, and not just in the neighbourhood. I enjoyed the change of Idaho scenery that I had not seen in quite a while. Bonners Ferry and Sandpoint were nice with temps above freezing, but when I spotted stakes put up around their fire hydrants and things in town, I knew they were expecting more snow than I wanted to see, so kept moving southward through Spokane, then west on the Interstate. From there, I picked up 395 southbound, and drove till sundown, tho it was still very early seeming – with the change in time. I found a nice hill decorated with a radio tower for a campground, and from up there I was able to pull in about 24 TV channels on my antenna.

It was cool in the morning, so Hailey opted to share my jacket for the first part of the day!

Then, she wanted to assist with the driving, and was quite good with the shifter.

Then it was time for a nap.

There was a choice of routes once we reached the Columbia river. We could either follow Interstate 84 along the south shore, or scenic highway 14 on the north shore, so we chose the latter. But not before a quick run to the Oregon side to fill with fuel at $2.33 instead of the $2.49 rates in Washington.

The scenery and the weather improved as we moved west, past the John Day dam.Then we crossed back into Oregon as we crossed the Columbia, and continued south on 97.

North of Redmond we checked out the Peter Skene Ogden State Park, which features new and old bridges over a very impressive canyon.

Lots of snow capped volcanoes visible in the mountain ranges to the west.

We’ll be spending a little bit of time around Bend, Oregon before continuing south, likely through the Crater Lake area – if road a weather conditions are favourable!

See you down the road.

Make sure you check out the video of Hailey in the separate post below. I just uploaded it today as well!