Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Northwest Return Travelog #2
Clarkston, WA - Fri, 30 Jul 2021. 9am.

Our story of planes, train, and automobiles did not end last night with success flying to Spokane after 3 canceled attempts. Once we landed in Spokane we still had more traveling to do. We landed just after 9pm as the last of the day's light faded from the sky. On final approach we could see red light over the horizon; after touchdown I looked again and the sky was all dark.

Once at the gate we alit quickly. Hawk went to baggage claim to wait for our one checked suitcase while I went to the rental counter to pick up our car. There was no line for me, and the agency had the car and paperwork all ready. I signed a card, received the keys, and was ready to go. It took another 10 minutes or so for the bag to appear.

We rolled from the airport a bit after 9:30pm and made a beeline for... dinner. We didn't get a chance to eat at OAK as half the eateries there were closed due to renovations and the other half were slammed, with 30+ minute wait times. On Yelp we spotted a Fat Burger near GEG and thought that would be an interesting blast from the past. We used to eat at Fat Burger at least a few times a month when we lived in L.A. I don't think we've eaten at one... I'm not even sure if or where we've seen one... in more than 15 years. Alas, it'll probably wait at least a few more years. En route to that restaurant we saw a Dairy Queen that serves hot food and decided, "Fuck it, this is closer, it's hamburgers anyway, and we can have dessert, too!"

We hit the road for real-real a bit after 10pm. It would be slightly over a 2 hour drive south to Clarkston. We took 20 minutes longer than that as we made a stop at a grocery store to stock up with sodas, tea, and breakfast foods for the next few days. By the time we checked in at our hotel it was nearly 1am. I didn't get down to sleep until almost 2.

After the late night morning came all too quickly. Hawk's alarm rang at 6:30am and mine at 6:45. We wanted to get up early to begin a full day of hiking and outdoors sightseeing. Well, we did get up early-ish. We silenced our alarms and slept in until 7:30/7:45. Even so, getting up did not mean being fully awake and productive. We kind of zombie-walked through making ourselves breakfast and packing our bags for the day.

Smoke and Fire

At 9am the temperature was already 82° (28 C). And the air was awful. We smelled the smoke in the air when we arrived late last night (er... early this morning) but couldn't see how bad it was. In the morning's light we could see that the sky was gray with smoke in almost every direction. There's a big wildfire burning not too far away. As of a few days ago the air quality was not registering so poor here. 😷



We walked around the outside of the hotel before beginning our drive. Out back is a nice little garden area next to the pool. I took this photo (shared above) to show how bad the smoke in the air is.... This pic does not do justice to how bad it is!

What you're looking at, BTW, are the mountains across the Snake River. Last night we drove down those mountains as we entered town. It probably would've been a great view if it weren't dark. And smoky.

When I want to travel somewhere and can't for whatever reason I rarely get frustrated. I simply put the destination back on the list, confident that I'll get there eventually. "I SHALL RETURN." It's getting ridiculous with Spokane and the Inland Northwest, though.

After an enjoyable trip to the Inland Northwest in May we planned to return a few weeks later... but that trip was canceled due to airline snafu. We planned our return a second time but that got canceled due to extreme heat. Our third attempt to return got canceled due to the craziness that is the rental car business right now (rates were $250+/day).



Now we're on our fourth return plan. We're due to leave Thursday evening this week... but we may have to cancel that because of the epic fire season burning in western Washington and Oregon and the Idaho panhandle. Potentially four plans in a row canceled. It's like the fates do not want us to return to Spokane!

I'm reminded today of a weekend years ago when I considered driving to Atlanta to meet with a bunch of net.friends. "It'll be an 8 hour drive each way," I reasoned. "That's too much driving just to hang with friends for a day and a half." I chose not to go. I figured I could find more enjoyable ways to spend the weekend at home without spending 16 hours on the road. Well, I was wrong. Friday night was fun (dinner and movie with friends) but by Saturday 10:30am I was bored, having already exhausted everything I could think to do for the weekend. I kicked myself for choosing to stay home.

Today I'm kind of kicking myself again. My plan was to be out hiking today in the mountains of the Inland Northwest, with more hiking in the mountains and to waterfalls over the next few days. But instead I'm home for the weekend.

We canceled our trip to the Inland Northwest Tuesday over concerns about the scorching heat in the region. Yes, it is hot out there, though the forecast today and for the next few days is slightly cooler than the forecast was on Tuesday. But mostly my regret is because I'm finding it hard to schedule a replacement trip.

"We'll just rebook the trip for a few weeks later," Hawk and I agreed when we made the no-go decision on Tuesday. All of our bookings were refundable, no fees, so cancelling was easy. But when we went to rebook... flights were easy, hotels were okay, but rental cars were a clusterfuck. Most agencies are showing zero inventory right now. The few who are, are asking $200++/day. We'd like to go but we're not willing to pay $800, $1000, or more for a rental car on a 3-4 day trip!

Canceling our trip to Spokane this weekend doesn't mean we won't go. It just means we didn't go this weekend. Trips that get taken off the books don't disappear; they're put back on the list of places to go next time. "I SHALL RETURN."



General Douglas MacArthur famously said those words in March 1942, after having been chased out of the Philippines by the invading Japanese army. "I came out of Bataan, and I shall return." The refrain became a rallying cry for Filipino people enduring occupation and inspired Americans on the homefront.

I'm not waging a war here but I have already planned my return to Spokane. I booked all the reservations this afternoon. ...Yes, barely 24 hours after returning from the trip we took instead of returning to Spokane!

We'll return to Spokane over the July 4th weekend. We're taking an extra day off to make it a 4-day weekend. With that extra day we'll add in another day of hiking... and it'll be at a mountain that was too snowy to get to anyway this past weekend. Extra day, extra hike; our re-planned return will be better than our originally planned return!

And while the July 4th weekend is barely over a month away, this isn't even our next trip. It's our next-next trip! In mid June we're traveling to the east coast for the wedding of two friends in New York and a week of outdoors stuff in Maine. This, too, is a trip that engendered MacArthur like stalwartness. I planned and canceled it several times last year due to Coronavirus. Eventually the grooms and I got so tired of remaking and canceling plans that I got ordained as a minister and married them myself. But the groom's family wants a big, traditional, religious ceremony and reception. That's what's in New York in two weeks.

As hawk and I wrapped up our trip to Spokane & the Inland Northwest a little over a week ago we were already discussing going back— as soon as this weekend! Indeed I started shopping for flights while on the flight home. Later that night I reserved a rental car and the next day I booked flights for Memorial Day weekend.

While we had our flights and rental car booked by Monday last week we didn't book our hotels until Friday. That's because it took several days to figure our exactly where we wanted to go. Yes, we committed to the trip before planning all the details! But prices were rising and we trusted there would be plenty of things we could do. After all, planning the previous trip involved many decisions about narrowing down a large set of promising things to an itinerary we could manage in 72 hours. Now it's almost time for Another 72 Hours! 😅

Inland Empire Travelog #14
Spokane, Washington - Sun, 16 May 2021. 1:30pm.

"Let's go sightseeing in downtown Spokane, Washington," probably does not sound like a fascinating idea to most people. That's largely because a lot of people probably don't know enough geography even to know where/what Spokane is (it's a city of 225,000 in a metro area of almost 600,000 in eastern Washington state), and very few are aware that there's a lovely park right at the center of town on the falls of the Spokane River. It was the site of the 1974 World's Fair.



We began our trek from the castle-like Holiday Inn Express downtown, where we stayed last night. We left our car with its wobbly 50/50 spare tire in the parking lot to walk to the park. It was only a few blocks away. That was one of the reasons we chose this hotel. Another was that we liked the exterior design, including its perch atop a natural rock outcropping a block above the Spokane River. (A third was that the night was free using a voucher from an IHG credit card Hawk owns.) 

After descending one block to the river we walked 2-3 blocks along the riverfront then crossed over a foot bridge to an island in the middle of the Spokane River. Actually there are two islands here, and they make up most of the park.



The park was quiet in the morning hours on Sunday. There were handfuls of tourists out enjoying the immaculate weather and lots of geese and ducks. We crossed the island to the center of town. The picture above shows the clock tower on the island.



As the Spokane River splits around these islands it crashes down a series of falls. A small tram (seen in the picture above) takes passengers on a short ride from the upper level, down near the falls, and back. We thought about riding the tram, but it wasn't open until later in the morning. Instead we walked down past the falls, using the stairs and railings also visible in the picture above, then climbed back up to the top and crossed over the gorge on the Monroe Street Bridge (far left).

Crossing the big bridge took us back to the north side of the river, blocks from where we started, but we crossed a footbridge back onto the islands again. We made sure we saw everything... everything that wasn't closed to construction, anyway. And it lengthened our walk. By the time we trudged back up the hotel hill, hot and tired, we'd walked almost 5 miles. Time for lunch!

Inland Empire Travelog #12
Spokane, Washington - Sat, 15 May 2021. 10:30pm.

Late this afternoon we got a flat tire on our rental car... while 10 miles away from paved roads up in the mountains above Lake Pend Oreille. I changed to the 50/50 spare and got us back down to the highway. Once back close enough to civilization that there at least was cell phone coverage again we started a phone call to Avis's roadside assistance hotline.

"Let's start driving toward Sand Point," I suggested. Hawk agreed. As the nearest town of any size it was the closest place we could possibly get help. If our 50/50 spare did blow out we'd get help faster by being closer to an actual town.

The Long Wait on Hold

Time passed. Ten minutes. 15. 20. We made steady progress even though I carefully limited our speed to 50mph (per the "50/50" temporary spare tire) and kept it to 45mph when safe.

As we rolled up on Sand Point I tried a separate call to the emergency hotline from my phone to make sure Hawk's call on hold wasn't lost in the wrong queue.

My call got the same voice prompts as hers followed by the now all-too-familiar message, "Due to unusually high call volume, wait times are longer than 15 minutes."

Why is it always "unusually high call volumes"? Why are there never unusually high service volumes? Companies clearly aren't planning for their customers' actual needs. They are simply cheaping out on service.

With nothing better to do we stayed on hold. We stayed on hold as we drove toward where help would be more likely. Understand, Sand Point is only a big town relative to what's around it. It has a population of 10,000. That was the biggest population center we'd been to in almost 48 hours since leaving Spokane Thursday night. But ahead lay Coeur d'Alene, a relative metropolis of over 50,000.

Twenty minutes became 30. 40. 50. 60. Finally— a human voice!

On Hold Sixty-Two Minutes... for a Helpless Agent 😡

The agent came on the line 62 minutes after we started the call. We'd driven 40 miles while waiting. With the additional 10 miles before reaching cell range, technically we were at the limit of our 50/50 tire. And we were just starting to get help.

The phone agent collected a ridiculous amount of information before proposing options for assistance. The first option he suggested was that we could go to a tire store, pay for a repair ourselves, and file for reimbursement with Avis. WTF?

"What's the nearest Avis depot we could exchange the car at?" I countered.

"Let me check," he replied. "Where are you?"

Like, dude, shouldn't that have been the first thing? In fact, among the first things I told you was that we're near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

"Curdoleen, how do you spell that?"

"Coeur d'Alene," I spelled out for him, including the space and the apostrophe.

"The closest stations are in Spokane, Washington," he said, confirming information we'd found on our own over an hour earlier. "One closes at 5pm, the other at 11."

"Well, since it's already 7pm you're saying there's only one that's open," I pointed out. "Will you check with that station to see if they have a replacement car and hold it for us?"

"I can't do that."

"You can't check?"

"I can't see any of the reservations systems. You'll have to go there and talk to an employee."

Fuck It. We're On Our Own.

I thanked the operator for his help and hung up. Including the hold time the call had taken 1 hour 15 minutes. I didn't chastise him over the delay or his inability to do anything because I could tell it wasn't his fault. It was the company cynically cheaping out on customer support.

What did I expect? Compare this: when we got a flat tire on a rental car two years ago the agent at the emergency number was much more helpful. 1) They answered almost right away, 2) they didn't recommend I pay for a repair out of pocket and then file for reimbursement, and 3) they called the nearest rental depot (less than 20 miles away) to verify they had a replacement car for me and ask them to hold it. At the depot the whole staff was nothing but helpful.

"Hey, there's a Kohl's!" Hawk said randomly as she hung up the phone. I pulled off into the parking lot. "Wait, really?" she asked incredulously.

"Sure. We're on our own for the night. We might as well take it easy and get to Spokane well rested." After Hawk shopped clothes for a few minutes we ate dinner at a fast food restaurant. No sense having empty stomachs if our 50/50 spare tire blows out on the side of the highway and we have to wait a few hours for a tow!

I decided to skip the rental depot for tonight and just return the car at the normal time tomorrow. We're staying in Spokane, anyway, and not planning driving tomorrow beyond a short trip in town then the jaunt to the airport. Why waste possibly hours at the depot tonight when the result might be no car is available? 

We pulled in to our hotel in Spokane around 9:30pm. At that point we'd driven our rental car 100 miles on a 50/50 spare. We made it!

Inland Empire Travelog #10
North of Sand Point, Idaho - Sat, 15 May 2021. 4:30pm.

Today was supposed to be an epic waterfall hiking day. We'd take five hikes to waterfalls. Alas, it has been a day of hits and misses because the guidebook we used to plan this trip is full of inaccuracies.

I wrote years ago about the book we call Dr. Smedley Q. Boredom's Very Dull Book of Waterfalls. Technically it's Waterfall Lover's Guide Pacific Northwest by Gregory Plumb. We give it our own (un)loving pet name because it's, frankly, very dull. And now we've found it's also frustratingly inaccurate. Three things:

1) The author is a college professor who writes in a passive and occasionally stilted style that embodies some of the worst stereotypes of academic prose.

2) The author focuses more on hydrology than hiking. It's like the book was written primarily to document the existence of waterfalls and rate them by their flow as measured in cubic feet per minute. (Yes, the book actually lists cfm ranges for each falls.) Descriptions of their scenic value are sparse, as are details about the hiking trails to get to some of them.

3) As we've been finding out on this trip especially, the book is full of inaccuracies. Driving routes to the waterfalls or their hiking trails have streets misnamed, are missing turns, and/or have distances wrong by miles. Moreover, once we've gotten to several of the supposed trailheads we've found that they're on private property with fences, locked gates, and copious "No Trespassing" signs. Some of the places have been closed up so long that any evidence there may once have been a hiking trail there is gone.

I'm writing this now after expressing my frustration about the book in several recent blog entries because we've just had another hiking fail. The directions for Jeru Falls were off by a few miles, and when we did finally find Jeru Creek it was clearly on private property. We're running about 50/50 this whole trip for waterfalls listed in this book.

I think I find this especially frustrating because we have a love-hate relationship with the book. We love it because it lists so many waterfalls, including smaller and more remote ones that other guidebooks skip over. But we hate it because it has let us down with inaccuracies so many times.

"Why not use the book as a starting point for your own research?" you might ask. Indeed, we already do that. We use the book to identify places we'd like to go, then cross reference its directions against things like Google Maps and web searches for online hiking sites. It's only by doing this that we haven't suffered more fails this trip! Plus, among the search results we found a companion website for the book. Its vintage, MySpace-like web design is a laugh!

Inland Empire Travelog #8
Bonners Ferry, Idaho - Sat, 15 May 2021. 1pm.

We're back in Bonners Ferry having just finished lunch here. This morning we traveled up north to near the border with Canada to hike Copper Creek Falls (previous entry) and then hunt for Smith Creek Falls. I say hunt for because Smith Creek was another wild goose chase courtesy of inaccurate directions and lack of field proofing in Prof. Smedley Q. Boredom's Very Dull Book of Waterfalls. Though this time we drove around until we caught the damn goose. By which I mean we did find the falls.



Smith Creek Falls was only a few miles and a wrong turn from where Smedley said it was. And the falls were on private property marked with copious "no trespassing" signs (there was even a big one on the bridge in the scene above; I cropped it out) so we admired them from the shoulder of the road.

I've written before that sometimes wrong turns can be serendipitous. In losing one thing and seeking to find it, sometimes we find another, too. Today we found, and enjoyed, this view of the Kootenai River valley:



By the way, the left edge of the picture above is Canada. I mentioned we were close to the border... that's how close we were.

Our plans for the rest of the day are all well south of the border so we drove back down to Bonners Ferry. It was a good time for lunch, anyway, and Bonners Ferry is the first town of any size.

While noshing on barely tolerable burgers at a local joint with a nice outdoors table I was amused by this view across the street:



Yes, it's just a gas station. But the price is under $3 per gallon! And it's not just this one station; it's most of them. Meanwhile, back in California, the cheapest discount stations near home are about $3.79/gal and the name-brand stores are all over $4.

Inland Empire Travelog #6
Bonners Ferry, Idaho - Fri, 14 May 2021. 10pm.

It's been a busy first full day here in eastern Washington and the Idaho panhandle. This area of the country is variously called the Inland Northwest— as opposed to the Pacific Northwest as it is hundreds of miles inland from the Pacific Ocean— and the Inland Empire. Tonight we hang our hats in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, after a day of 280 miles of driving and hiking several trails.



I've already written about a few of our hikes and one of our misses earlier in the day: Meyers Falls and Sheep Creek Falls, Douglas and Crystal Falls, and Sweet Creek Falls. We did make a few more stops after those including another miss. We tried to hike the route of a historic log flume, but the area was closed. It looked like it suffered flood damage in the winter and Forest Service hasn't been able to fix it yet. During an impromptu visit we made to a Forest Service station this morning we saw a crew getting briefed to go out in the field. A ranger explained that they're only getting to a lot of Springtime maintenance just now that the CDC has revised guidance on mask wearing.

While the flume trail was closed we did check out a few other areas. Mostly they were roadside points of interest... without having awesome waterfalls lurking behind them.

Our guide to these stops was a free pamphlet we picked up at the hotel last night. See picture left/above. Its handy map on the front side helped us quickly locate treks that were hard to locate with our poorly written waterfalls guidebook. And on the flip side it contained concise directions that were generally more cogent than the book's— though the map also had faulty directions for Meyers Falls.

BTW, the guidebook— which we've dubbed Professor Smedley Q. Boredom's Very Dull Book Of Waterfalls— has a companion website now. We consulted the website for better pictures of the falls. The site is... let's say, precious. It seriously looks like they hired teenage MySpace users in 2006 to design it.

Dinner and a Room with a View

We checked in this evening at a casino/hotel on the Kootenai River. We don't care about the casino; we picked the hotel because it looked nice and had a reasonable price when we booked. Plus, we could reserve a room with a river view and balcony for just $10 more. Which we did.... And then when we arrived this evening we noticed that pretty much all of the rooms have balconies overlooking the river.

The hotel is conveniently located adjacent to Bonners Ferry's historic downtown... about as much of a downtown as a town of fewer than 3,000 people has, anyway. But it has a few restaurants within walking distance.

We walked a few blocks out to Mugsy's Tavern. There we ate hot sandwiches on the covered patio and I enjoyed a couple pints of beer. The food was merely okay but sitting down like old times again felt special. Unwinding after a long day made it doubly special.

Now we're back at the room. I sat on the balcony overlooking the river for a while then came back inside. It's getting a bit chilly outside! But we'll probably leave the sliding glass door open all night for the fresh air. It's nice that the balcony is angled so we have privacy even with the door and curtains open.