Day Fifty

Last night was rough; those darn trains going by all night long kept me awake (you’d think I would be used to it by now). I woke up early, but I guess Chuck thought I was asleep because he snuck out of the bedroom, got in the car and drove away. He had my cell phone in the car, so I could not call him, but I was clever. I got on the computer and sent a text message to his phone asking where he had run off to. He had just gone down the road to have a cup of coffee.

He came back, much to my relief. I told him I needed to have some taters before leaving Idaho, so we went to a restaurant called The View. What a disappointment. Chuck just got an English muffin, but I got the “scrambled” eggs with avocado and tomato. It came with a side of hash browns. They could have been any of the hashbrowns we had in North Dakota, Wisconsin or Illinois. And the eggs were awful. In my opinion, scrambled eggs should be cooked gently, over a low flame. Especially if they have avocado in them (a fragile fruit). These had been blasted with heat and were so hot when I got the plate, I couldn’t even touch them for a few minutes. The eggs were tough and the avocado had been obliterated. They were smothered with cheese, too, which didn’t help a bit.

Anyway, we went back to the house and the four of us tried to figure out the best way to get me through Washington. I started out on Route 95 to the town of Rathdrum. We hunted around for a place to eat and found a gold mine. It was an Irish pub and we had a fantastic tuna melt, the music was awesome (80s) and they had wifi. I called my mom to let her know I was doing OK.

We set about looking for a campground. The waitress at the restaurant said there was a place where people camped, but it wasn’t a park or a campground. Just a hilly section off the highway. Chuck suggested we stay there, mostly because I think he was tired of trying to find places to stay, but it just didn’t feel right to me. Plus, we would have had to lug all our stuff up a steep hill. We kept on looking until we found some signs indicating a campground at Hauser Lake, Idaho. We drove around the entire lake, and could not find the campground. Frustrated, we continued our search for a place to sleep. We crossed into Washington and found Newman Lake. We stopped in at the campground, and they don’t usually accept tents, but I think they felt sorry for us. They let us pitch our tent by the water for $15. There were no showers, but we were both just thrilled to have found a place.

We got everything set up, and I noticed one of those things that looks like a giant buggy that you can paddle around a lake in. It’s actually called an “Aqua-Cycle” and I’ve always wanted to try one. Chuck is not a water lover, so I was shocked when he said he’d go out on the lake with me in the Aqua-Cycle. I found out it was $7 for an hour, and that sounded reasonable, so we hopped on and paddled away. It must have looked pretty comical since neither of us had ever done it before. Once we got out into the middle of the lake, I felt the water temperature, and it was pretty mild. I decided to go for a swim. Chuck said he’d never forgive me if I tipped the cycle over, but it was very stable and I was able to hop in the water with no problem. Getting back was another story. Good thing all this biking has built up my arm muscles because normally, I could not have pulled myself back up. We paddled back to the shore, changed clothes and went up to the main building to have some pizza. We met a really nice guy there named Eric, and we chatted with him for quite a while. He handed me a generous donation for my ride. The pizza was decent, and we invited Eric to come back to our tent site and hang out around the bonfire. At first I didn’t think he would, but I was happy to see him show up after a little while. He said he was going to be in Seattle around the same time we were, so we exchanged phone numbers, and hopefully it will work out that we can all get together.

The lady who made our pizza came out when her shift was done, and gave me another donation. We were feeling pretty discouraged when I rode into Rathdrum, but the day turned out great. We had a great time paddling around the lake, had a nice dinner and met a new friend. Life is good.