I saw a sign in a gift shop recently that said something like “I love you more today than yesterday. Yesterday you really got on my nerves.” It’s funny because it happens to the best of couples, friends, sisters, etc. Not every day is rainbows and narwhals!
Despite spending 24-7 together in a 200 sq. ft. RV, we haven’t had many of those days, but there have been a few and one of those occurred right after an amazing day cycling the Hiawatha Trail (link here). Doug saw the road sign above that was a predictor of our evening to come.
Doug had found a route that looked good on Google Maps to get us up and over the mountains to our next destination – a campground on the Thompson River near Thompson Falls. Getting to the route involved back-tracking all the way back to Wallace, Idaho on I90 but Doug was convinced it would be shorter overall. Soon we were rolling past the old mining town of Burke (that unfortunately had seen better days) and that’s where the pavement ended! What appeared to be a paved road on Google Maps turned out to be an unpaved forest service road meandering up the mountain.
The dirt road started out ok but its channels, rocks and washboards got larger as we continued up the mountain pass. We’d seen a few spots that might have worked for an overnight stay, but we were really hoping to get up over the mountain and down the other side. After an extremely bouncy 30 minutes (that seemed like at least an hour) we saw the dreaded orange vests ahead. As we approached, two very pleasant women informed us that they had the pass closed for road work currently, but if we wanted to wait a few hours, they’d be done for the day. The younger woman looked our RV up and down like she was a frog trying to cross NYC’s 5th avenue. Then she made multiple comments that in summary stated that compared to this side of the hill, the downhill side was rough, narrow and steep.
Since most of my internal organs still hadn’t dropped back into their normal locations from the trek so far, I made an executive decision that we were not waiting and we were not going over this pass on this road. Not my best collaborative moment.
Doug kindly and skillfully turned the RV around and we bounded back down the hill looking for the quickest spot available to tuck in for the evening. Doug found a spot that I declared we’d never fit into. As we started to pull in he asked me to hop out and just “hold back a few branches”. You can tell, I’m all for this.
In fairness, the RV did fit…well, as long you didn’t care about opening the doors. Slender Doug managed to squeeze out while I mixed myself something with vodka. During a walk with the dog, he found a better spot just a few hundred yards down the road, so we moved the RV and rejoiced that we were parked and still married. As a bonus, the new camping spot ended up being in the middle of a big patch of huckleberries! Huckleberry pancakes the next morning took the sting off the aborted shortcut.
