Courdelaine Lake, Idaho

I know that I misspelled that, but oh well. I don't feel like looking it up right now to get it right. We leave for Yakima, WA tomorrow morning. We've had a nice time visiting family friends here in Idaho. They live in a small house right near the lake in a rural area. Yesterday we got a tour by boat across the lake and down the St. Joe river. It is really unique - this river channel goes right down the middle of two lakes for quite a while before it narrows down into your standard river banks. It is also officially designated the highest navigable lake in the world! Now I have been to both the highest navigable lake (Lake Titicaca between Peru and Bolivia) and river in the world!

Today we went by car through the beautiful state park, which I learned is the oldest one in the Pacific Northwest. There is a rails to trails bike path that runs for 72 miles from near the Montana border nearly all the way across the panhandle of Idaho. It runs along the lake here, so we saw several sections of it by car as we crossed it. It would be a fun one to ride on as it is mostly downhill if you start in the right place.

Our hosts here have two schnauser dogs and they are really cute and entertaining. One of them is rather reserved and I have just won over her affections today but we are leavning tomorrow! Well, I guess that's about it for now.

Here's the biggest piece of news... Denis and I are going to extend our vacation by one day so that we can meet Kristina in McMinnville on Saturday evening. We have booked a room at the McMennamin's hotel there in town. It is owned by the same brothers who own the Kennedy School where we stayed in Portland last month. We so enjoyed that place, so we are really looking forward to having another stay. It is going to be so great to meet one of my internet buddies! Woo hoot!