_17 June ‘09 Wednesday

Last Sunday we moved over to Lake Sawyer RV Resort at Black Diamond.  This is our first time here and we’re really pleased with what we found.  The only negative is most of the RV’s are parked right on top of the other.  I mean, if you put your awning out, you’re sure to touch the coach next to you.  Now I said most of the sites, the one that we’re parked in has pretty good room on both sides. 

_The negative is the front of our coach is looking directly into the front-side windows of the coach next to us because of the angle in which we’re parked. OK, enough of the negative…  The clubhouse, the rec-room, and the large deck all overlooking the beautiful Lake Sawyer make up what this “Resort” is all about…fun and relaxation at its best.  About 50 yards off the beach are two little islands.  Located on each of them are a couple of small beach cabins that are so “adorable” that they’re almost un-real.  With the great weather we’ve been having lately (29 consecutive days of sun and 75+ degrees), we couldn’t wait to paddle our way through and around the lake. 

_It did take us 2 days to completely circumnavigate the lake, but in doing it we didn’t leave anything unseen.  We even had an Osprey take a fish just off our “port side”…pretty cool.  Today we went over to Flaming Geyser State Park…

_We haven’t been there for over 40 years.  They say that you can “never go back” to see and enjoy the same things you enjoyed the first time…well that ran true for Flaming Geyser Park.  The drive through the park is still very pretty, but the “geyser” is disappointing to say the least.  It is so disappointing that I didn’t want to take a picture of it so as not to embarrass it (just kidding…).  Another place that we hadn’t been to for a long time was Black Diamond.  In the mid 1800’s, Black “Gold” was found here and Black Diamond was born…it grew to the largest coal mining operation in the Northwest and brought with it a destination location for travelers to leave their homes in Seattle for "the country".  They would ride trains (up to 2 a day)

_to visit this quaint little town, visit the famous Black Diamond Bakery, and then make their way down into the valley to see the “Flaming Geyser”.  We did find a great little restaurant that wasn’t there in 1800. 

_The building fit well into the era of the 1800’s, but I don’t think they were able find and enjoy a good pizza then.  Well we did, and we highly recommend it to anyone that comes this way…a A+ for PIZZA and BEER.    

_7 June ‘09 Sunday

When you live your life on “Wheels”, you have the right to change directions and revise your plans.  Well that’s just what we’ve done.  Our plans were to keep heading north and east, but we decided to make a left turn and head west to Seattle.  I would imagine that others that “Full Time” have had to see a doctor or two while on the road.  Well, that’s what we’ve had to do.  The problem was we could never find the “solution”.  It finally came down to the fact that for us to feel comfortable we should see “our” doctors in Seattle. 

Putting the cruise control at 57 we drove I-90 most of the way.  We’ve never driven more than 350 miles in one day but on this trip we found our 2nd day doing 534.  It wasn’t that I wanted to push it that far, it just was an easy drive and we had a tail wind the whole day.  The first 3 nights were spent in Wal-Mart parking lots and then a campground in Bozeman before a couple nights in Coeur d’Alene.  We did take a couple of hours to visit Livingston, Montana…I really don’t know why we pulled off the highway, but we did.  I guess it was because we’ve passed it by many times and it just “called”.  We were both wonderfully surprised by Livingston, the architecture, the people, and MONTANA…  Just walking the streets of the town,

_checking out the little businesses, the old buildings with wonderful styling, and finding a “brewery”.  Yep, we found Neptune’s Brewery.  It was small in stature and confined in an old house, but it had everything going for it.  Louise and I both enjoy a good IPA and they had one.  The two guys that owned and ran the brewery made us feel right at home.  Besides having great beer, they also have a very interesting food menu from which we ordered an appetizer of Pork Wasabi Balls with Blue Chips to go with our IPA’s.  Our stop in Coeur d’Alene was routine. As always, our choice for campground was River Walk RV Park, early morning breakfast and lunch at Franklin’s Hoagies, a visit with Larry and Pauline, and spend as much time as we can with Joelle, Amy, Trevor, and Randy.

On Sunday we packed up and moved to Spokane.  Louise’s mother Lois was spending her 93rd birthday

_with family in Spokane and we wanted to join in, so we parked the coach in John’s driveway and chatted the day/night through.  Late Monday afternoon we arrived at our campground in Fall City.

_Tall Chief is our “home” campground with the Western Horizon group that we joined in early 2006.  We’ll be here for at least 5 weeks before we move on.  Saturday, we joined some more of Lou’s family

_Mark (one of Lou's Brothers) and Susan are part owners of one of the Unlimited Hydros.  They put on one heck of a deminstration for the crowd with their jet powered hydro.  Even with the short course, they ran reallllllyyyyy fffaaasssssttttt.....

_Mark (one of Lou's Brothers) and Susan are part owners of one of the Unlimited Hydros.  They put on one heck of a deminstration for the crowd with their jet powered hydro.  Even with the short course, they ran reallllllyyyyy fffaaasssssttttt.....

_Most of the jet skis were sponsored by the factories and the hydroplanes were those that you see racing around the country.  We had a great day, got a little wet, ate and drank a little, and were ready to call it quits when the last checked flag was flown.