Trains and Grizzly Bears, A Canadian Roadtrip - Coeur d'Alene to McCall, ID

Wednesday, September 25

Today we are driving south to the town of McCall, Idaho where our friends Cathy and Heather have a vacation home.  By coincidence, they were going to be there at the same time we were driving through so they graciously invited us to stay with them for a couple of days, which we readily accepted.  Not only did we want to see them, but we love the area around McCall as we had visited there quite a few years ago and had always wanted to go back.

We were up early and got ready to go, checked-out, got our car from the valet and were on our way before 9:00.  The sun was out and we knew we were in for a beautiful drive down the Idaho Panhandle.  We followed US 95 down through dense forested land and rolling hills with ranches and farmland.  There were also lots of rivers and lakes, so it was all very enjoyable.  We had intended to find a place to eat and have an early lunch, but we only passed through very small towns and didn’t really find anything.

Finally, we entered the town of Grangeville that was big enough to have several restaurants.  We chose Amy’s Full Belly Deli mainly because of the funny name, but the food was actually pretty good and we had a nice lunch.  From there we continued our drive to McCall and arrived at Cathy and Heather’s around 4:30.  The time zone had switched to Mountain Time just north of McCall so it was later than we had hoped to arrive.

We expected a smaller, cabin-like home, but to our surprise it was a full three bedroom, three bath house and was very, very nice.  The location was great, it was on two acres of land in the woods a ways out of McCall.  It was beautiful, what a wonderful place they have.

After being warmly greeted and made to feel at home by Heather and Cathy, we unloaded the car and then spent some time talking on their wonderful deck overlooking the forest with the mountains in the background.  Soon it was time to eat and they made us a wonderful dinner of chili, cornbread and asparagus; a really delicious meal.

After dinner we sat around and talked before finally calling it a day.  We will be spending the next two days here and Cathy and Heather are going to show us around so we are really looking forward to that.