Tuesday, September 24
Sunny
skies greeted us this morning and we were up and on the road by 9:00. We drove back to Highway 3 from Trail and
started east towards our border crossing in Idaho, but things didn’t go quite
as planned as I’ll explain later.
It was a
beautiful and lonely drive to the border crossing at Nelway and we only saw
a few cars on the way. There was no one
else at the border station and we were told to stop, shut off the engine and
unlock our doors. The border patrol
agent took our passports and then three others came out of the little office
and started opening our doors and checking everything in our car. While that was going on, she asked us the
usual questions about what we had bought and we told her what we had and asked
about the apples. To our relief she said
the apples were fine so we didn’t have to get rid of them, and evidently the search
of our car went well as they sent us on our way. We
didn’t know whether we looked suspicious or the border crossing was so remote
they didn’t have anything else to do, but being searched so thoroughly did make us a little
uneasy.
We
continued the drive south and really enjoyed the beautiful area we were going
through. After a while, Val asked me if
we were in Idaho and when I said yes she asked if I was sure as she had seen
signs that said otherwise. I checked the
map and sure enough we had entered into Washington, I had entered the wrong
border crossing point into Google Maps and without checking, had followed the
directions into Washington.
I felt
pretty stupid as I usually double check those things, but it didn’t really matter as
this was actually a faster route, but I had wanted to go through Bonner’s Ferry
and Sandpoint, Idaho before we reached Coeur d'Alene.
It was still a nice drive and we continue to have beautiful scenery to
look at. We eventually turned east and
hit Highway US 95 in Idaho and drove south through Lewiston before getting to Coeur
d'Alene.
We were
actually staying a little south of Coeur d'Alene at the Coeur d'Alene Casino
Resort, but we did have to make a stop at a bank in Coeur d'Alene to replenish
our U.S. cash before reaching our hotel for the night. Idaho is in the Mountain Time Zone, but it
was interesting that this panhandle part of Idaho is on Pacific Time.
After a
short drive from Coeur d'Alene, we found the hotel and looked for the
check-in. There was very little signage,
but we finally found it and left our car at valet and went to check-in. There is no bell service, so we loaded our
luggage onto a cart and went to the front desk.
After we got checked in the clerk told us we were booked in the
Spa Tower and this was the check-in for the Mountain Tower. We wondered why we weren’t asked at valet
since there were two places to check-in, but we were here now and asked how we
could get our luggage to our room as it was quite a distance. We asked if we could get any help and he said
he would call a cart to bring us there with our luggage, but when the guy
showed up he was busy and said we’d have to wait and made it clear he really
didn’t want to do that so in exasperation we said we would just walk and take our
luggage ourselves, not a very good start to our stay and we had found the staff
to be less than professional.
After a
long walk through the casino and having to ask for help several times we
finally found the elevators and got to our room. I wasn’t very happy, but what was done was
done so after settling in we decided to go down to the casino. It was a nice casino and we had a good
time. After a while, we started getting
hungry and found a place to eat and had an OK, but not great dinner. Our gambling was bad luck for me as I
ended up losing all the money I intended to spend, but Val won enough money at the very end to break
even for the night.
We
returned to the room and relaxed for a bit and then called it a night. Heather and Cathy, our friends from
Atascadero who we went to Hawaii with a couple of years ago, had bought a
vacation home near the town of McCall, Idaho. We’ll be staying with them
tomorrow night as they happen to be at their vacation home at the same time we will be in Idaho. We are really looking forward to seeing them
and their home.
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