Desert to Mountain: Washington and Idaho

Harry and Lake Coeur D'Alene from Mineral Ridge

I think prior to the moment I turned east and headed into the rising sun, the Road Trip (in capitals as I see it in my mind) was still plausibly in the realm of fantasy. I had a long route plotted out with many exciting stops all neatly organized in on a road trip website and scribbled in the margins of my Rand McNally atlas, but in some ways I can’t really explain, I felt detached from the reality of it. Maybe there was some small part of me that doubted my ability to go through with it.  With the passage of every mile east on highway 90, I felt a change in my heart, like a tide pulling back at ebb, slackening and then rushing forward. Yes, just like that.

The high desert of Washington is beautiful. I am fond of the grey greens of brush cadmium-yellow washed by the bloom of rabbitbrush. Our first stop was in the heart of the desert, at a place that was lush forest and glacier well before the time of man. Just off the highway, near the promisingly named town of Vantage, is the Ginkgo Petrified Forest which provides a window back into that time. A forest of ginkgo trees has transformed from wood to mineral, crystallized trucks now strewn about at the edge of a canyon that cuts deep thought he layers of history beyond imagining. While fossilized leaves of the ginkgo tree are common, petrified trunks are rare.

Petrified ginkgo trunks

Fossil of a ginkgo leaf

Petrified wood Rorschach? Baboon? Really?

Perhaps akin to star gazing, to stare at the layers of time in this geological cross section has the power to render the trivial concerns of daily life utterly irrelevant. As Dr. Degrasse-Tyson says, “We are a speck on speck on a speck on a speck…” And even on our speck we are but a grain of sand on the edge of a canyon. 

As we leave the Petrified Forest, we through a herd of bighorn sheep ewes and lambs. They kindly pause prettily in the sagebrush before moving on to greener pastures at the nearby golf course.

Bighorn ewe and kids, Vantage, Washington

The drive across Washington into the Idaho Panhandle to Coeur D’Alene is a long one for a slow little truck. Pagoo traversed many passes, although not joyfully. The steepest inclines reduced her 4-cylinder engine’s top speed to 40 mph. I was grateful that the slow truck lanes kept me out of the way of impatient drivers. After such a drive, the sight of Lake Coeur D’Alene was cool draught. The highway runs just along the lake’s north edge and we get our first look at the indigo basin wreathed with conifer covered ridges. Our camp is nestled a few miles up Beauty Creek from the lake---it is quiet and bright with late summer flowers and butterflies. My neighbors help me back Pagoo into her spot (although I am getting quite good at this) and instantly congratulate Harry and me on not being a college fraternity or other such bothersome neighbor. They are on their way to Yellowstone for five days of kayaking. My upstream neighbor seems aloof at first (as perhaps do I---I’m working on that) but comes by to chat the next morning as we are both packing up. He is from Chicago and is at the end of a road trip from Spokane up to Banff, Southeast Alaska and back down to Idaho. In his mid-60s, he has been planning this for years, he speaks of the journey with obvious devotion: “I kept waiting for someone to come along, and no one would, so I decided to go anyway.” He gives me tips on Yellowstone (everyone seems to have these) and suggests that I should not miss Devil’s Tower (“Ya know, da one from dat space man movie…”).  

Campfire breakfast

After a breakfast of campfire grilled bagel and local smoked salmon (I may never be able to as thoroughly enjoy a conventionally toasted bagel again) Harry and I take a quick tour along the dry cobble bed of Beauty Creek before heading for Montana. We have missed the peak spring wildflowers but the fruits are ripening on wild strawberries, Saskatoon, elderberry and Oregon grape. Sadly, the most common bloom in the camp is an invasive Centaurea, a relative of cornflowers. Pretty purple but, *sigh*. A chipmunk gives Harry his dose of S-Q-U-I-R-R-E-L for the day and we say goodbye to Idaho.

Centaurea meadow, near Lake Coeur D'Alene, Idaho

Red-tailed chipmunk at Beauty Creek, Idaho