What a treat not to have to get up at the crack of dawn and start driving today. I let the boys sleep in and I went to the lobby of the hotel and was able to FaceTime my mom and my wife to get caught up on everything back in Canada. It was a little overcast this morning with quite a breeze but eventually everyone got up and we made our way down to the restaurant for our free breakfast brunch. It was surprisingly good with porridge, cereals, toast and muffins, hash brown potatoes, scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, tea coffee juice milk. We all found a nice table on the patio overlooking the river. It was a fantastic start to the day.
We decided not to be in a huge rush to get on the road to our next destination as we thought there would be not much to do there.
We decided to go and see the sights in Spokane. Caroline and I strapped on our rollerblades and the boys got their scooters ready to go. We headed down the river paths and unfortunately one helmut was forgotten back in Calgary. I stopped for a break and looked over in the long grass and lo and behold there was a bike helmet sitting there that fit perfectly! Bingo!
We travelled along side the river for over an hour and were quite marvelled by the amount of waterfalls and system set up for hydroelectric power. The boys got a photo taken of them in a giant radio Flyer wagon. We eventually made our way back to the hotel and had a quick shower and loaded up the van.
Nicholas wanted to go to a skate park. We found the cheapest fuel in the city and made our way up to the north to the skate park and were pleasantly surprised by how great it was. The boys tried many tricks and burned off a bit of steam.
Just for something new, and Darren decided to pull over at a tanning salon and try his first ever spray tan! They had a 50% off sale for only $15 and I had never tried it before so what the heck!
Into a booth and down to my skivvies and Buddy went to work with this big spray paint can! I was a little nervous I was going to end up looking like Magda from something about Mary but it was only a slight colour change. I am now a rather on healthy looking orange colour and everyone in the van quite enjoyed laughing at my experience!
We stopped in at Gonzaga University and toured some of the facilities including the massive gymnasium where summer basketball camps were taking place. We stopped at the zag store and picked up a couple shirts for the boys and were back on the road headed south.
We drove for about an hour and then pulled over and had a bite to eat at taco Del Mar and McDonald's restaurant. We still had a good five hours to go so put the pedal to the metal and raced through southern Washington and eventually across the mighty Columbia River into Oregon.
The scenery along the river was very unique as there were giant hills that look like mountains but were covered in dead grass with the occasional Vineyard and field operating with irrigation. Those fields jumped right out at you as they were a bright green and stark contrast to the remainder of the dead desert like land surrounding it. The Columbia river goes a long way in land from the coast and we followed it for quite a while before heading south and travelling through Central Oregon as far as a small city of 76,000 people called Bend. We arrived at Sunset and quickly found our motel but we're starving to death so we jumped in the van and drove five or six blocks away to field over looking the mountain range called Crux. It came up on Google and TripAdvisor as a neat place to eat and we were quite surprised when we arrived. There was a restaurant you could eat inside of or eat food from one of the many food trucks surrounding a little field. The restaurant itself was a craft beer place with almost 50 different types to choose from. We went to one of the food trucks and ordered a large nachos handcrafted with pulled pork and all sorts of flavours we had never heard of before. The boys each had a small burger and I had a large email after driving the majority of the day today. The temperature was extremely cool at only 19°C where as last night it was 30°C. We ate and visited for a while and then headed back to the motel to call in the night as we had a long day of driving to San Francisco on Friday. 20 minutes of electronics and we were all out cold. An interesting day with some scenic driving through the American Midwest.
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