Driving west to bicycle east—our journey from St. Paul almost to Seattle….
We left St. Paul on Wednesday afternoon not really having any plan on exactly how far we’d get each day. We made it to Aberdeen,SD on Wed. evening—headed out very early Thursday morning and got all the way to Billings, MT that evening. We stopped in McLaughlin and Lemmon and made contacts with the post offices there…ended up tracking down Fred, the letter carrier in Lemmon, yes the only one. He walks 12 miles a day delivering. We also caught our first glimpse of the mountains—Wow!!!
We named the RV Betsy, and she’s been a trooper, chugging through the mountain passes, sometimes at only 35 mph, but she made it.
Friday we again headed out early with a stop in Livingston, MT. to meet Chris Bender, a letter carrier/NALC contact. He was very helpful and friendly—thanks Chris! We chugged the rest of the way across Montana and almost all the way through Idaho. After a stop for supper, a gentleman stopped and asked about the lettering on the RV, so Gary told him about what we were doing and then was telling him about a little trouble we’d been having with the RV. He directed us to Perfection Tire in Post Falls, ID where they took care of us first thing this (Saturday) morning. While they were working on it, we went for a bike ride and stopped and had a good breakfast and then headed out.
We drove to Spokane and decided we’d find a golf course—Indian Canyon was the place, and what a beautiful course!! Even though they were packed, we were lucky enough to get out within an hour, and played with two great guys, Bruce and Chuck. A lovely round of golf in beautiful weather.
We tried to get a motel room in Moses Lake without much luck, so kept pressing westward. We ended up just before George, WA at a lovely RV park run by a retired rural letter carrier—it’s a small world. Her husband is a retired truck driver who had spent many years driving through Minnesota. What a small world it is!!
We’ve got a bit over 150 miles to drive into Seattle tomorrow. It’ll be an easy day of driving which is nice. I haven’t seen the Pacific Ocean in many, many years and have never been to Seattle, so looking forward to having Monday to sightsee and explore before we head out on Tuesday!!
All in all, it was a wild drive west, with lots of incredibly scenery, many wonderful people and building our anticipation for the weeks to come
