Today we spent our last morning at Wallowa State Park. We had to admit, we are quite sad to be leaving. This is truly a place we can’t wait to come back and visit. :)
We woke up to pouring rain though and spent 45 minutes waiting it out in the tent. David and I were like a Nascar pit crew getting the tent packed up and ready to go. We spent last night getting mostly everything packed so we could make a quick exit, which was definitely helpful.
We drove about 5 hours or so and saw some amazing scenery. We took I-90, which wraps through these incredible mountains. We actually found out that it’s a part of Joseph Canyon that the Nez Perce Native Americans used to live in. Originally we just saw them at a view point stop… little did we know we would be traveling on/through them. They were REALLY high and REALLY steep, but David drove like a champ and we had little panic going through them. ;)
We did enter Washington though and David stopped so we could be in two places at once A Walk to Remember style. It was really cute, and I was even able to snap a picture proving that we were in two different spots at once. One side read, “Welcome to Washington” the other read, “Welcome to Oregon.” Pretty cool.
About two and a half hours into our journey, we entered IDAHO! :) It was my second time in the state (the first time was when my family and I were visiting friends in Boise), and David’s first time, so it was pretty fun. We drove through various parts of Idaho and even passed the University of Idaho. We saw so many “Go Vandals” signs, it was kind of funny compared to the OSU, UO, GFU, etc. we are used to.
At about 1:15 p.m. David and I entered Coeur d’Alene (population 44,137) and a few minutes later we passed Silverwood! We were so excited to go, but we had to wait until the next day so we could the full experience.
We arrived at Farragut just before 2 p.m. and oh.my.word. It was the BIGGEST state park David and I have ever seen. There were like four different main loops (like miles apart) with a ton of sites and windy trails and stuff. Shoo. Confusing! One thing we noticed though… there were “Warning: Do not feed the bears” signs e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e. Another lady that was checking in even had to ask what to do if she saw a bear, and whether they needed to log it or report it in anyway. The ladies at the desk looked at her polietely and said, “No, they just kind of roam and crawl around.”
Is this a joke? Ali kept joking with me about bear sightings before we left, and I read that as a last resort pepper spray works (of course you have to be within like three feet for it to be effective). The website I looked at said it’s also a good idea to fight the bear. Sorry, but I don’t think if David or I were to get in a fist fight with a bear we would walk away as the winners. Needless to say, I had my pepper spray handy, just in case.
We got our our site though and it was good. Not as good as Wallowa, but definitely a good spot. It was substantially smaller and very wooded. Like, very much in the trees, which wasn’t bad, but we were very much separated from anyone and everything. Except the bike trail that was behind our site that little kids on bikes seemed to enjoy. We were also pretty close to the playground so we enjoyed a chorus of kids singing songs for a brief amount of time.
We set up camp and attempted to start a fire after the camp host sold us a six dollar bundle of logs. We tried everything to get it to stay (including using up David’s bottle of lighter fluid, burning various trash and my entirePeople magazine) but it wouldn’t burn for more than a few minutes.
So we did the only thing we could think of: drive back through Coeur d’Alene to the Walmart and pick up a fire starter log. It was successful and we had a good fire for the next few hours. We read our books and had Top Ramen for dinner. It was a good day… the night; however, was a different story.
We crawled into our tent fairly early and decided to read for a bit. I was exhausted and fell asleep pretty quickly only to be shaken awake by David. THERE WAS A BEAR IN THE WOODS. A real one. David heard it growling and woke me up to verify. I didn’t hear it but I trust that it was one. It was SO scary, and I was literally shaking like a leaf. Call me a pansy, but if you were in a mesh-topped tent, in the middle of the forest, with a bear nearby and a small bottle of pepper spray, you probably would be shaking too.
David was fine throughout the entire thing, he actually managed to fall asleep fairly soon after. Not me though, I was terrified and kept begging David to have us sleep in the car before he fell asleep. That didn’t happen, partly because he was already asleep and I was too freaked out to leave the tent.
I kept waking up every time I heard the slightest of noises. Our neighbors down in another site were up until after 4 a.m. and were walking around, so I kept thinking that if there really was a bear nearby, the people probably would have let us know by screaming and running and stuff. A little morbid sounding, but comforting nonetheless.
Needless to say, it was a rough night and we were both eager to pack up and go into Coeur d’Alene to stay at the Hampton Inn hotel for following two days.
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