Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

Today we left Alota, Washington and drove to Steptoe Butte State Park, which is a 3,600 foot butte where one can take in a 360 degree view of The Palouse.  The information I have about the butte itself is that it escaped being completely buried in volcanic ash.  It is the volcanic history of this area with its many ash falls that make it such fertile farm land.  Here is how it looked as we approached.

We were promised visibility of up to 80 miles, and we were not disappointed.  However, is was fairly hazy today, and so it might have been a better view on a clearer day.  I believe the post-harvest disking of the fields has the dust kicked up.  Still, it was well worth the drive up to see it.

Here's one for you, Denise.  Denise asked to see our rig.  I'll take a few more along the way.

I didn't take a lot of pictures today because after driving through the area for hours and hours and hundreds of miles, it starts looking all the same.  Still, it was gorgeous.  Don't let my lack of posted pictures fool you into believing we didn't love the entire day.

We saw a big wind farm under construction.  None of the turbines were generating electricity yet, and cranes were still present with some of the towers just now being raised.  We have seen wind farms with more turbines, but these were especially big turbines.

It has been quite windy throughout our stay in the area, and so we were glad to see that this resource will be harnessed to generate electricity.  We are great supporters of wind energy.

So that's about all we did today.  Tomorrow we will move on to Glacier National Park.  Mike has our cell phones set up to be our own personal wi-fi hot spots, which is very cool.  Nevertheless, we still need cellular service to use it.  It seems cellular has been available more and more within the national parks, but we never know until we get there.  That's why I decided to write this post tonight.  If I have cellular service, you'll hear from me again after we get to Glacier.  If not, anything I have to say about our visit there will have to wait until we return to civilization.  I imagine we will stay at least three days in Glacier.  I am so looking forward to doing some hiking.

But this isn't my last blog post of the day.  I visited a quilt shop today, so I'll tell you about that in a separate post.