Over the River and Through the Woods to Washington We Go!

Monday morning we traveled a few hours to the neat city of Missoula, Montana. We grabbed some maps and info from their visitor’s center, then headed about 20 miles out of town to a more secluded campsite at Lee Creek. We decided to hike through the mountains a tad so we found a place to park and a trail to explore. After hiking for what seemed like forever and never really reaching the top of any of the rolling mountains, we eventually came to a sign that let us know we were on the Lewis and Clark trail. That gave us the hint that we were never going to get to the top of any of these mountains; we were walking in history’s footsteps though, and that was definitely surreal. I couldn’t imagine being one of the first people to explore these mountains, not ever knowing what was going to be on our path.

Mountain selfie. At this point, neither of us had showered since South Dakota at Steph and Tyler’s.

After our hike we needed a big, hearty meal, and we were craving pizza. After roaming a few blocks of the downtown, we ended up at MacKenzie River Pizza Co. The pizza was delicious, the service was far from excellent. Come to think of it, we were pretty great at picking restaurants with great food and sub-par service throughout the entire trip. After dinner we headed back to our campsite and, yet again, wished we would have had more time to check out the city. When we had visited the information center, the man suggested renting bicycles (for free) and check out the city that way, and if we had a couple days in the area to rent inter-tubes to float down the multiple rivers that flow through the city. We’ll definitely have to go back to Montana to check out more of Missoula, visit Bozeman, and mosey further north to check out Glacier National Park on the border of the US and Canada. I cannot express enough how beautiful of a state Montana is. More pictures and more time..next time.

Tuesday we had a very foggy trip to Spokane, Washington. I didn’t sleep well the night before, so I napped for a bit of the drive. We did listen to some very good Radiolab podcasts that day though. Radiolab is tied for first with the Stuff You Should Know Podcast I talked about a few posts ago. These are hour-long, three-part stories centered somehow around one subject or idea. They’re so great, so check them out! This was also the first time in almost a week that we gained back any cell phone service.

Mountains and trees were sprouting out of the clouds and fog!

Spokane was actually a really cool city. We spent most of our time there in the downtown area walking the trails and learning the city’s history at Riverfront Park. This was neat area full of carnival rides and activities for kids, and viewpoints of the falls and historical landmarks for people like us!

Me, my slushy, and fanny(pack) overlooking the Spokane Falls!

Spokane Falls Selfie!

Cute as hell!

Definitely shaking my booty.

After exploring the park, we ventured into a few book stores including Auntie’s Bookstore, Boo Radley’s where we bought some classic books, and Atticus Coffee Shop where there were so many cute kitchen accessories and it even had a section where you could rent books! We ate at a delicious Irish Pub called O’Doherty’s where I had my first local piece of salmon and the strongest glass of sangria I’ve ever tasted! After dinner it started to get pretty cloudy outside and decided to get to our campsite. Prior to our trip there had been a number of forest fires throughout the state of Washington. While they didn’t affect us directly, since there was a storm rolling in and there was so much dust and ash from the remnants of these fires, the sky turned a scary shade of red and black. We managed to get our tent up just in time for the heaviest downpour on the trip. Unfortunately, we found out our tent wasn’t the most waterproof, so Kevin got out in the storm to put tarps over the tent to help prevent any more water from entering.

Book I found in Atticus Coffee Shop that reminded me of our good friend Brian ❤

My babe being the absolute best and taking care of b’idness!

The first time we remembered to take a picture of our setup!

We’ll finally be reaching Seattle and Portland in our next posts, so stay tuned for those! Happy traveling!