On to Idaho

We were in no big hurry to set out this morning, so we slept in until 8 a.m. Our group has split up for a day or two, and today we traveled with Tom and Nanci east on US Hwy 2. We left the mighty Columbia River behind and headed across central and eastern Washington, passing miles and miles of cropland. Nanci says a lot of it is planted in a special variety of short wheat which is shipped to Japan.

Rowes are staying near Newport, WA, to visit an old fraternity brother of Tom’s, and we went a few miles farther and to a Corps of Engineers campground on the Priest River in Idaho. It's at the confluence of the Priest and Pend Oreille Rivers, and the campground has lots of evergreens. The camp hosts were very helpful in getting us situated, and they say that early in the morning, the geese will appear along the beach. There are three or four successive nestings, so the population is doing quite well. Unfortunately that means that the area around the beach is littered with goose droppings, which we originally thought were from dogs, so you can imagine they're not small. I hope to see some of the local fauna on my morning walk.

Our Priest River campsite.

The Priest River meets the Pend Oreille.

This is our first time in Idaho, so we’ll add it to our list of states visited, but we’re passing through only a narrow portion of the northern tip of the state and will be in Montana tomorrow.

We passed up the chance to visit the Albeni Cove Dam--the Corps project of which this recreation area is a part--so I couldn't title today's entry "Another Dam Day."

Tonight we played Rummikub. As usual, Ken let me win one round, but he got two out of three. Then we had mulberries and yogurt over shortcake for desert.