Road Trip Part 6: Coeur d'Alene, Seattle and a quick stop in Canada

After a great night at a fantastic Fairfield Inn in Butte, Montana, we headed to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for a night.  It was a short driving day, only 4 hours, and we checked into a hotel not in Coeur d'Alene.  I screwed up on this one.  Adam was driving, I looked at a ton of places, and ending up booking one about 10 miles past Coeur d'Alene.  It ended up being fine, but I hate errors due to not paying attention, and that's what I did here.

My only knowledge of Coeur d'Alene is from the book Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech.  Back in my student teaching days, I taught this book to one of my classes, and part of the book takes place in Coeur d'Alene.  Needless to say, I had major flashbacks during this leg.  The town/city turned out to be beautiful.  We walked around the longest floating boardwalk in the world (3/4 of a mile) and had dinner overlooking the lake.  It was truly just a beautiful evening.

The lake was absolutely stunning.

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

French fries.  Needed to have some sort of potato in Idaho!

We left the next morning for Seattle!  The drive to Seattle had one of the most gorgeous sceneries I've ever seen for an interstate, to the point where there's even a look-out RIGHT off the interstate.

Literally right off the interstate.

How beautiful is this??!?!

Selfie

Adam's friend Karel had moved from Toronto to Seattle the day before and was in temporary housing, but was gracious enough to let us crash with him.  Since it was a one bedroom, we used our sleeping bags and slept on the floor in the living room, but it did the trick.  Location was pretty convenient, and we spent our days exploring Seattle's neighborhoods.

First views of Seattle

Seattle skyline

Couple of things about Seattle: 1, parking and driving sucks.  As someone who is used to driving and parking in NYC, I would gladly take driving in New York over Seattle.  And 2, it's really hilly.  Way hillier than I was expecting.  Adam would like to be able to bike to work wherever we end up, and I was taken aback by how many hills there were and how steep some of them were.  Another thing with the driving is that many of the roads are two ways, with parking on both sides, and people park in both directions no matter which side of the street they're on.  This is something that on my parent's street in suburban NJ, you can get a ticket for, yet it's perfectly okay here.  So bizarre.

Seattle

We did have some good food in Seattle, including cooking Cesnecka, a Czech garlic soup, for Karel which he said was pretty damn close to the real thing.  But of all the places we went, Rock Creek Seafood and Spirits in Fremont took the cake.  The highlight was this broth that the black cod was cooked in.  OMG, deliciousness.  Cocktails and wine were good, too, and I would highly recommend this place to anyone in Seattle.

Amazing peach ice cream.

Dinner!

We had brought our passports with us on the road trip in case we wanted to go to Canada and Mexico at all, and decided to use them and go to Vancouver, Canada for a day/night.  We are so glad we did!  It was so nice to just relax and enjoy a city for a day without exploring neighborhoods and looking at it from a "could we live here" point of view.  Though we only spent a day in Vancouver, it was great.  A bit foggy at times, but worth it.  We took the SeaBus, a ferry, from downtown to North Vancouver (what a fantastic commute if you live there) and eventually settled into a bar right on the water for a few hours before going in search of a coffee bun (a pretty tasty treat, but the maple cream cookies were better).  The immigration line to get back into the USA sucked, but it was a great pit stop, even if it was a bit out of the way!

Vancouver!

Sunset over the Vancouver skyline

Coffee bun

On the drive from Vancouver to Portland, we stopped for lunch in Bow, Washington at Taylor Shellfish Farms.  They're an oyster company, and we bought oysters and crabs and sat on the patio and had a yummy lunch with a beautiful view.  The rest of the drive wasn't so great - Seattle traffic reared it's ugly head - but we did get to Portland in time for dinner :).

Lunchtime on the water

Yum!

View from lunch

Oyster farm selfie

3 comments:

  1. OK, street parking in the wrong direction is just bizarre, I don't care where you are.

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    1. It was so bizarre! And just completely acceptable, which made it even more bizarre.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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