Last few days in Idaho

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

On Tuesday Scott took us down to Cabela's (http://www.cabelas.com/) huge outdoor/hunting/fishing store and we met up with his Uncle Mike there - Scott's Mum's elder brother. We then went for a tour round the Buck Knives (http://www.buckknives.com/) manufacturing plant.


A few minutes away was another lovely lakeside town with its own city beach - Coeur d'Alene:

Mike invited us round to his for a BBQ yesterday (Wednesday) but we managed 9 holes of golf before driving down there:

Mike and Sue have a lovely cosy garden, with lots of lovely plants and water features:

Today - our last full day here before dawn departure tomorrow - has been spent mostly on site at the Rec centre, but Jo and I went for a walk first of all. Here's a panorama of the first half of our walk round the golf course and the resort:

That's all for now - next stop Grants Pass.

Idaho

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

For the older readers - I keep thinking I want to sing out "Ivanhoe-oh-oh" when I say Idaho. (Check out UK TV programme theme tunes of the 60's you younger ones).

Scott and I played racketball yesterday morning. Quite an experience for me - and a 4-0 thumping too (although 2 very close games). I couldn't get the hang of the bounciness of the ball - especially when it came off the back wall - it ran away from me! Mind you, it has been 2 knee operations and 2 heart procedures since I last played Scott at a racquets game - squash. It must have been 6 or 7 years ago anyway - as that's how long we have been without our courts at the Tor-na-Coille, where we last played.

We had thought about a game of golf yesterday but never got round to it after the racketball, then a late lunch. Instead, Jo, Lucy and I set off round one of the lake/golf course walks. I didn't time or measure it, but it was probably 3-5 miles. We stopped to take a photo at the millpond of a lake:

Scott drove us to another golf resort for dinner last night - very nice too - and today we headed for the Water Park - http://www.silverwoodthemepark.com/. It had roller coasters too, but the boys weren't interested - they are both water babies and we spent more than 6 hours there - and they were never out of the water.

Jo's not one for high adrenaline pursuits but she did manage two and a half laps of the Lazy River, plus a little splash in the Wave Pool. See if you can spot her in the crowd striding out towards the waves:

Now relaxing on the decking with a beer, G & T and a large bottle of Pinot Noir!

Seattle to Idaho

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Sitting here in our timeshare in Northern Idaho - we've had some overnight rain, which persisted through breakfast, but it's clearing up now and I'm sure it'll be another hot and sunny day, but I thought I'd take a few minutes out to do a quick blog posting. Facebook has a number of photos etc on it, so I'll keep this short.

Seattle was great and it was nice to meet up with Scott's cousin, Mark. We did the standard "Duck" tour  in the amphibious vehicle - every tourist city in the world seems to have these now. Here we are at the start:

25 bucks this official photo cost us - I had to swallow hard. Our driver, Captain Chaos, was good and certainly got Jo going. She started complaining about the music as we boarded the Duck, but, within 5 minutes, she was up there dancing away, swinging her arms above her head.

We did the Underground tour - pretty interesting and some funny stories, well told. We also spent time at the fountain next to the Space Needle (from the 1962 World's Fair) - mostly waiting for the big fountain to explode:

The flight through to Spokane on the Washington/Idaho border was quick and easy. We had lunch there until Scott and Lucy arrived in the truck to pick us up.

Our first full day in Idaho was spent at the pretty lakefront town of Sand Point, up towards the Canadian border. Nice day all round and we finished it - as we did the day before - with another great barbie on our decking overlooking the golf course, courtesy of Scott - and Lucy, of course. They sure know how to BBQ - lots of practice, I guess.