Thursday June 10, 2010 - Columbia Falls, Montana to Kennewick, Washington

I received word from Gena's aunt & uncle in Portland that they were having a book club meeting Friday night. Not necessarily a big deal, except that they were meeting to discuss a book I had recommended to Doug & Doni back in September (or was it November?) - A Canticle for Leibowitz. They had read it, loved it, talked their book club into reading it, and were meeting to discuss it and wondered if we could arrive by Friday afternoon instead of Saturday?

We decided that we could do this. We got ready Thursday morning and headed back to Glacier for one last drive. It was raining steadily, and it didn't stop when we entered the park. We knew we could only drive 17 miles in, as the passes weren't opened yet. What we had discovered earlier in the morning was that, though the published opening date for the passes was June 18, in reality rangers were telling people it probably wouldn't be until well into July. The constant rain that we had been encountering ever since western Wyoming had been snow in the mountains of Glacier and elsewhere. The result was reports of 100-ft high snow drifts across the highway, delaying the opening of the pass considerably.

We wanted to drive in on the west side though to try and do a short hike that our friend Fred had recommended. However, half-way into the 17-mile drive, we realized that with it raining steadily, we weren't going to do the hike, and we might as well turn around. So we did. We grabbed lunch at the cafe we had eaten at the night before and hit the road. We continued west on highway 2, which oddly enough shoots further north into Idaho, just a few miles from the Canadian border, before dropping back down southwards directly into Spokane, Washington.

The drive was beautiful - lots of pine trees the whole way, rolling mountains, and plenty of rivers and lakes to watch for long stretches of time. I've always heard that northern Idaho is pretty, now I've seen some of it and it's true.

We managed to get all the way to Kennewick, Washington, where we stopped for the night. The goal had been to get as far south in Washington as possible so that we could get up early, drive to Pendleton, Oregon, and still get to Portland in time for the Friday evening book club. It was a long day - made longer by the gaining of a final hour on our westward journey across the country. We were now officially back on Pacific time for the first time in three-and-a-half months. It felt good. But so did sleep!