Trains and Grizzly Bears, A Canadian Roadtrip - Cathy and Heather's Day 1

Thursday, September 26

We slept in today, but not intentionally.  I woke up and looked at the clock and was surprised to see it was already 8:30, I guess our internal clocks hadn’t made the switch to mountain time.  It was a leisurely morning as we were all on our own for breakfast and wandered in at various times.  Cathy, who is an early riser, was out walking the dogs and I had hoped to join her, but didn’t get up in time.

After we were all fed and walked, we chatted for a while and then Heather and Cathy showed us around the area south of McCall.  I can’t really name all the places we saw, but they were all really picturesque and very scenic, they even arranged for us to be in the middle of a cattle drive.

We stopped along the road to take some pictures and got a bit of a surprise.

 

We had stopped to take some pictures when we heard some cattle in the distance and Cathy called out for us to get in the car as she had to move it.  Sure enough, in a cloud of dust here came a herd of cattle down the road being overseen by a few cowboys and their dogs.  They completely filled the road and we shot some pictures as best we could from the car.  I asked Cathy if she arranged a cattle drive for all of her guests and she said we were just lucky.

We heard them before we saw them, but then around the bend we could see dust and cattle and we found ourselves in the middle of a cattle drive.

 

We continued our drive stopping at places that caught our interest including among other things, a ski resort, a lake, some hot springs and even an old barn and ranch house owned by someone they knew.  Not only did we see a lot of interesting places, but our drive was over the back roads that provided beautiful scenery in themselves.

Cathy and Val

 

It was well past lunchtime and we were all hungry so we decided to stop somewhere for lunch.  Heather and Cathy suggested a place they liked in the town of Donnelly called Cougar Dave’s.  We were all for it as so far, everywhere we had gone was great.  They were right as the food was good and we had an excellent lunch.  After lunch it was back to the house where we spent the afternoon relaxing.

We wanted to take Heather and Cathy out to dinner so tonight was the night.  We asked them to choose a place they liked and they chose the Cutwater Restaurant at the Shore Lodge in McCall.  We had an excellent dinner and everyone really enjoyed their meal.  After dinner, it was back to the house for a delicious dessert of banana chocolate chip bread and coconut cream pie, quite a dessert extravaganza.

One thing I didn’t mention today was that Val woke up with a sore throat and it looks like her cold has returned.  She was a real trooper today and went through the whole day without complaint, but she had run out of gas and called it an early night.  Cathy sent her to bed with a hot toddy which made her throat and cough better so we’ll see what happens tomorrow.