7.13.2012 If it's Friday, it must be Spokane

It started sprinkling last night just before we went to bed and about an hour later, the light and sound show started.  Lots of thunder and lightning - it was wonderful.  Unfortunately, the rain didn't wash the bugs off the front of the trailer that have collected there since Grand Teton National Park. I think we'll take them home as a memory of the trip.

The drive this morning was only a bit over 50 miles and was a most delightful route organized for us by Google when I asked to avoid freeways.  Most of the drive was on county roads, wandering through the hills, passing through places with names like Elk and Spirit Lake.  More timber and subsistence farming that started to look more like hobby farms as we got closer to Spokane.

We're "camping" with the big rigs at the Alderwood RV Resort for the next two nights.  Technically, it is in Mead, on the Spokane border. It has surpassed our expectations. Spencer is enjoying the pool! Showers, laundry, pool, adequate free wireless, shaded pull through (narrow, but with privacy landscape) spaces, full hookups, and very clean. To top it off, it's over $10 cheaper with the Good Sam discount than a Washington State Park with hookups where they charge extra for out of state visitors! We're especially enjoying the air conditioner - we seem to have brought Arizona with us on this trip with just one cool night in Yellowstone - everything else has been unseasonably warm.

We caught up with Spencer's parents and went out to lunch and toured the Whitworth University campus with them to figure out where the wedding was going to be located before giving him back. Since he hadn't been swimming since this morning, the first thing he when he got to their hotel was go swimming! The first thing we did was reorganize the trailer so that it was set up for two people instead of three!

Since we're in a city for the first time this trip, we not only went out for lunch but also for dinner! Yelp found us a very good, sorta hole-in-the-wall Chinese place and we found a road that was new enough that it wasn't on the map to get there.