July 23-25 2110 Priest Lake, Idaho

The crew dropped me off at the town of Priest River and I met John for breakfast. We hopped in the coach and headed to Priest Lake. We were looking at campsites and the campground guide said this one was big, so we drove in. It was a misprint, it was tiny  and to make a long story short there was too little road and too much bus. Crunched the front corner.  Some could say that I was standing on the road helping John navigate though the big rocks, tight trees, tight turn etc.,still a novice at that sort of thing,  but John chooses to call it a learning experience. It is the only time I have ever seen John mad.  Later he said that he was mostly mad at himself for even going in there.  He did not yell or insult  my person or anything. But he was not his normal happy, joyful self for a couple days. We could still drive the bus , no one was hurt ,insurance paid for most of the repair.  We were in a beautiful place. We found one short site left in one of the many campgrounds on the lake  on Saturday during the busy season of the summer and shoe horned the bus into it.

John at our first campsite, bus ding

bus in tiny spot, front almost to the road, and I found this hitchhiker under the bus The next day we found a new spot closer to the lake that was a huge drive through. We spent 2 weeks there waiting for the body shop to fit the bus in to repair it.

The lake is awesome. Huge, clear , surrounded by forest and mountains. Weather was warm and sunny. John in the lake

Me in the lake. John only took that photo so that the people behind me would not know he was taking their photo. He called them a breeding pair of white whales.

There was a huge  old growth forest in the area that had escaped forest fires and logging. We did a lot of hiking in it.  Really beautiful and kind of sad that the whole area used to look like it before white man arrived. John hugging a big one and my hero pushing apart big trees so I could easily walk down the train.

We took the boats on the channel between the upper and lower lake. It is called the Thorofare. Pretty flat 2 mile paddle. Into the wild untouched forests  of northern Idaho. John on the Thorofare and on the upper lake.