Day 3/4 - Coeur d'Alene, ID to Glacier National Park

It turns out WiFi is not always easy to find, so a day or two might go by between posts.

Yesterday I woke up in a Walmart parking lot north of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. To thank Walmart for the free camping spot, I headed into the supercenter to pick up supplies for Glacier National Park. This was the 3rd trip to a Walmart in my life: the first an exploratory run with my mom when the first Seattle area Walmart opened in Renton (high school??), the second a late night trip to a San Diego store for Trivial Pursuit and a bottle of Walmart's finest red ($11.99).

All was well until someone stole my cart. I was 90% done with shopping when I left my cart behind to grab a roll of foil. When I came back, the cart was MIA. I wandered the aisles in a daze, wondering if I'd just gotten lost in the supercenter maze. Nope: it was gone.

(Wait - that rhymes. You could rework the last two sentences into a haiku:

Aisles in a daze

Lost in Walmart maze

Cart was gone)

I headed back to the entrance to start over. And when the aisle was blocked later by a woman in a wheelchair cart trying to corral her young daughter, I pushed rudely past them rather than let the cart go even for a moment.

From Coeur d'Alene, it was off to Farragut State Park for hiking, sunbathing by Lake Pend Oreille, and a cadged shower near their campground.

By 2pm, I was back on the road with the goal of getting most of the way to Glacier National Park. Elizabeth is on her way in from Boston by train, plane and automobile and will get off the Amtrak in West Glacier later today.

Taking highway 200 east from Sandpoint, I traveled along this Idaho Scenic Byway into Montana. Here's a quick snapshot from the driver's seat to give you a feel for the road - dead bugs included:

Spent the night in Lolo National Forest, in a rustic campground with about a dozen camping sites. (Forgive the garbage photo quality.)

Backing into a tight camping spot alone: officially hard.

Cocoa the cat regards nature.

And now, sitting in a Starbucks in Kalispell after driving for an hour along Flathead Lake, the largest lake west of the Mississippi.

Off to Glacier!