Back from the Bend

After a nice hike and climb up into the sunshine at Zion, the clouds started arriving and the time had come to leave for home. Even on the I15 it took 5 hours to reach Salt Lake City, but 7 pm on a Sunday evening seemed like a good time to pass through a major city. That night, just a couple of hours north of SLC, was the last night above freezing that we were to have.

The next day, as we drove through the bottom of Idaho and into Montana, winter returned with temperatures we hadn't seen since leaving the prairies. We stopped for lunch in Dillon (I can recommend the hamburgers at Papa T's in town) and continued north to the I90, taking a short detour through Anaconda and stopping for the night at the rest area just east of Missoula.

Missoula was a bit warmer, being quite a bit lower in elevation, but there was a cold prairie breeze as we did our shopping. Skies were clear so we took Rte 200 northwest to Sandpoint, an excellent alternate route. Much of the route follows one of the branches of the Clark Fork and eventually ends up on the Ponderay River. It's very scenic, avoids the traffic on the I90 and doesn't have any elevation gain or loss, since it follows the river downstream. It was exactly 300 km from Missoula to Sandpoint by this route and even with the slower road, it took us only 4 hours.

A quick lunch and we were on to the Canadian border, crossing in record time. The agent didn't even bother looking at the list of purchases and receipts that I had organized. Unfortunately, we just missed the Kootenay Lake Ferry and had to wait another hour and a half for the next one. Another good time to have a camper, where we could keep warm, have a snack and lie around reading while waiting.

This time when we arrived home, we were able to drive into the driveway, barely. The snow was gone but in its place was about 2 inches of solid ice over everything. The desert of western Texas was starting to look pretty appealing!