Sep 10/11 - Couer d'Alene, on to McCall, Idaho

Did we mention that we are now at Day 113 of our adventure. Seems like only yesterday we headed out from Aylesford on this jaunt.

It was time for an oil change on the Pilot, as well as tire rotation. Since we have been in mountainous terrain I also wanted a check on the brake pads. We just past 23000 kilomneters since we left home, and in an abundance of caution we got things checked out. We have a problem with the brakes on TaJ, but since she is considerably lighter than the tow vehicle we are living with it for the moment. When we get a bit farther south and can get an appointment with an r/v repair shop we will get them looked at.

Couer d'Alene turns out to have a really nice downtown park, and the shops downtown are pretty nice as well. We spent much of Sunday afternoon wandering. The smoke was cleared for our day and it was sunny and fairly hot. A breeze off the lake cooled thing down in the late afternoon.

There are street sculptures, many of them for sale:

There is also a moose children's story that is based on the park in the centre of town about a moose and his mouse friend:

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There is a great kids water playground, and it was busy on this hot, late summer Sunday:

The boat harbour boasts a 3300 foot long dock which can be walked. It has a bridge to let the boats out of the harbour. It should be noted that we did not see a single sailboat...this is power boat country:

We had cable for the first time in quite a while, so we got to watch a bit of the build up of Hurricane Irma's approach to the Florida Keys. We visited the Keys last year so our memory of the drive out to Key West is still vivid. We cannot imagine what it will look like in a couple of days.

We got up at the crack of dawn on the 11th and hooked up TaJ and got to our appointment with the repair shop on time.

A family run affair, these people are really friendly. It turns out our brake pads are just fine, so no extensive time required to get our oil change and tire rotation done. We were out of there by 9:30am and took a quick look for some new clothes at Macys before heading out for McCall, about 430 kilometers south, in the mountain time zone.

The drive was through some pretty spectacular scenery. Here is the view from above Lewiston, with the serpentine road that used to be the main route into town before the modern highway 95 was completed.

The road down from the viewpoint is so steep we had incredible fuel mileage:

The entire trip south looked much like this and, along the way, we did see a couple of active fires. A giant Sikorsky Helicopter with a water bucket was working this fire but were unable to get a picture.

Our arrival at McCall Campground and RV park was the low point of the day. A forlorn looking campground, with trees that wept sap on every site. Only about 15 of 40 sites filled, this was bad. After a short search on the internet, we quickly exited that dump and headed for something better, although more expensive. We ended up in the very classy McCall RV Resort. Wow, what a difference, and only $7 a night more than the last place wanted.

We need good internet as we have planning to get done on our route south, and we need information on fires, etc. in order to decide which way to go. Will we make it to Yosemite? Maybe, but if the fire situation there worsens we might have to abort that part of our trip. For the next few days we will have some luxury. The showers at this place are to die for. Big and spacious, as well as private.

We will explore McCall, a well known resort area of Idaho, for the next day or two while we figure out the next steps.