The National Park Tour - Post 1

I will admit right off the bat that I forgot the little do-hickey that allows me to easily transfer photos from my camera to my ipad, so I'll just be posting photos that I take on my phone.  Which I have to email to myself and open on my ipad.  Yes, I know I could just take photos with my ipad, but I think that looks really dorky.  So, look for more photos once we are home.

Anyway, we hit the road about 1:00 Friday afternoon, Cheryl, Mare and I in our pretty rented Ford Explorer.  We did run into a little traffic getting out of the Bay Area.  Once we got past 80 and onto 505 N it was pretty smooth sailing.

We drove up to Oregon.  Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I have lived on the West coast for all these years and rarely been north of Sacramento, much less cross the state line.  We drove past some pretty places

This was one little town we drove thru. It was funny.  

We continued on to Bend, because we thought if we stopped at Weed...

We had been told that Bend was a cute little town, but I really can't tell you.  We drove in after dark and left the next morning.  One thing I can tell you is to avoid the Shari's there.  We went for dinner, it reminded us of Denny's and thought "how bad can it be".  While Cheryl and Mare did not have any problems, this is how my night went.

I'll have a cheese omlette with potato's and sour dough toast.

Waiter brings our meals and I cut into my omlette and in addition to the cheese were all these nice consistent size bites of ham.  Vegetarian here, this is a problem for me.  

I call the waiter over, he takes the plate back.  Oh would I like a free piece of pie while I wait?  No, but Mare wanted pie for dessert so she gets a free slice of peach pie.  Cheryl and Mare start to eat.  Ten or fifteen minutes go by and my remade omlette has still not made an appearence.  Finally the waiter brings it over and sets it down in front of me and there is no toast - oh and no fork.  Waiter says toast is being made, it will be right over and my beloved grabs a fork from the next table.  I start to eat my very well done omlette while waiting for my toast, and waiting and waiting and waiting.  The manager comes out to ask how things are?  Well, still waiting for my toast - oh ok.  She leaves and toast finally arrives.  It looks like they held the toast in front of the toaster.  Needless to say I was not thrilled.  We asked to see the manager again, waiter returns and says she is not coming back out.  What?? Really?  So waiter goes back and manager comes out.  Cheryl says I don't think we should have to pay for her meal, had to wait so long, the omlette was over cooked.  Manager finally says well, just take it off the bill, I'll figure it out.  So just avoid it and I promise not to base my feelings for an entire state on the service at Sheri's in Bend.

One thing we did notice was in some of the small towns there were public bathrooms.  We stopped at one, because after all, we are women of certain age and we like to know where the bathrooms are.  One of the things we liked about Ireland was every little town you passed thru had a very nice public bathroom, but I digress.  This little town in Oregan had a very nice public bathroom and if I could remember the name of the town I'd tell you.

We continued on to Idaho, I just don't know how you can take such a good picture while travelling at 70 miles an hour.  Technology!

On our way to Couer d'Alene.  For those of you without the google, Couer d'Alene was named by French trappers and roughly translates to Heart of the Awl.  Yes, awl as in leather working tool.  The city symbol is a very cool heart with an awl thru it.  When you think about it, it is not a great symbol.

It was very pretty.  It used to be a pretty sleepy town and is now a really big resort area.  You can see the new constuction every where and a whole lot of it looks like any place USA.

They seem to like public art here

We stayed the night, went down to the lake front the next morning and walked around

And yes, the water was cold.

And I have a question about Idaho - how do they get their flowers to grow so damn big and pretty

Everywhere I looked were hanging flowers, flowers in big pots, half pots hanging of the side of buildings.  You think they water them or something?  I'll have to try that once we get water in California again.

Then on to Montana!