28 July 08 - 21:03
I Wanna Go Home
Maybe not really but... Dave is missing the comfort of the familiar. Things like not only knowing where the grocery store is but where to find your favorite things within that store; not only knowing the people you will socialize with but maybe knowing the stories they will tell, and even when you go somewhere new, knowing the roads that will take you there.
So we are heading towards
the familiar—Highway 2. We are headed northeast from here with our eventual destination being the Leisure Travel Vans manufacturing plant near Winnipeg, Canada, where we hope to get some bugs out of our RV systems.
We've spent the last couple of nights in Clarksville, WA, just across the river from Lewiston, ID, catching up with our computer stuff. It was a nice, but expensive, park so when they offered us free pizza and root beer floats we took advantage of that. We did not take advantage of the rock concert next door—we just waited it out. Fortunately, when we checked in the clerk warned us about the concert but reassured us that they stop promptly at 10:00 pm so we were able to go to sleep when we were ready to do so.
As we were following US 12 through Lewiston on our way out of town we found ourselves driving down the railroad tracks. Does that make us a trackmobile? A trackmobile has wheels that lets it drive on roads or railroad tracks.
Then US 12 took us between the tracks and the river dike which were both raised above us. Does that mean we took the low road? I generally prefer to take the high road but sometimes you have to do what you have to do. :)
As we drove along I saw several “game crossing” signs but the one that most caught my eye was next to a golf course. I never saw any carts full of gamers crossing the road, though. We did see three deer lying by the side of the road in less than an hour. We had the windows closed so I couldn't tell how “gamey” they smelled.
Had enough word games yet?
We are following the New Passage Scenic Byway and the Lewis & Clark Trail. We don't have maps of either but I'm guessing they must split up somewhere or why would they have two names? This stretch of both follows the Clearwater River. It is hot out here today so, being Sunday afternoon, there are lots of people rafting and tubing on the river. Have you ever noticed that type A people can make work out of rafting?
Our side of the river is the Clearwater National Forest administered by the US Department of Agriculture. The other side is the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness administered by the US Forest Service. Why? Who determines which is which? What are the implications of those differences? Inquiring minds want to know. But not badly enough to try to find out for myself.
We stopped along the side of the road in a shady pullover for lunch. I'm getting tired of our easy to make ham sandwiches so I splurged some of my energy to make tuna salad sandwiches. :)
That made it nap time. I've finally learned the correct arrangement of seat back and pillows to let me sleep comfortably while Dave drives. It was driving me nuts before that every time I fell asleep my head dropped forward waking me up. The trick is to lean forward while moving the seat back away from you. Then the neck pillow will cradle my head so I can sleep.
Not everyone wants to sleep while driving, though. For those people I saw a gas pump advertising coffee. It really looked like you could load your tank with coffee and I know some people who would like that. I'm not one of them.
Now we are in a National
Forest campground where we found a shady spot with a breeze. We are
doing our best to turn the campsite into an office. Dave is burning
the papers that would go into a shredder if we had one. 
Our
computers look odd on a picnic table but, for us, it's the best of
both worlds. 
We don't have Internet here, though, so this won't get
posted today.
TTYL,
Linda
one comment
Greetings, Linda. Hope you see this. I’m finally reviewing your messages again – I still enjoy your writing. Peter is still here and looking at these over my shoulder. Anyway … I thought I would respond to your comments on the place names above. The US Forest Service is part of the US Dept of Agriculture and as such is sometimes called the USDA Forest Service. All National Forests are administered by the USDAFS. Wilderness Areas are always (by law) part of a National Forest. So what you saw is probably mostly an artifact of different timeframes for the signs. The whole place is probably part of the Clearwater NF which is administered by the USDAFS (and which contains roads and logging) and the part of the that NF across the river is the Selway-Bitteroot Wilderness Area (in which no roads or logging are supposed to happen).
Peggy B () - 24 08 08
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