Last pictures from Newport

We left Newport on Thursday to continue our journey east....

First, some last pictures from Newport:

We had noticed that our longer window awning on the driver's side had quite a few holes on the part between where it attaches to the side of the bus and the part that covers the awning... you can see one of the worst ones about 8" from the right end in this picture...

This shows some more of it. We had taken pictures because we thought we may need to supply them to Zip-Dee, the awning manufacturer. While they have dealers around the country, their headquarters is just north of Chicago. We thought that if we needed something major done, it might be best to try to stop by there. I called them, and the fellow I spoke with indicated that we can get the piece to replace that - we just need to get the exact length (we did an approximate measurement at 15') and he can have it made and ship to us. We've added this to the Virginia to-do list!

Dwayne decided to clean the solar panels before we left... we should have taken a "before" picture - suffice it to say that they looked GREAT after he was done. And he didn't do too bad on taking a "selfie" either!

As we were leaving Newport, I took a picture of the only stoplight in town. The lady at the Pend Oreille County Museum said that her husband likes to say that their town still has only 1/2 of a traffic light, because 1/2 of it is in Newport, Washington, and the other half is in Idaho!

Passing Couer d'Alene Lake...

Beautiful lake, even though reflections on the glass and smokey skies obscure it some.

Road construction in many places narrowed the road to one lane, but traffic was light enough that it did not delay us.

Miss Kitty in her accustomed place while traveling.

We stopped at a rest area near Superior, Montana. The local Methodist church was providing free coffee, so Dwayne took advantage of it and chatted with the fellow who was there. He found out that they don't get a lot of snow in this area of Montana - the snows dump on the high part just west of here, and then the clouds pop up over the mountains and sip this area before dumping more east of them.

I had read in the Day's End Directory that there was a campground just behind this rest area - you can kind of see it through the trees.

An example of a listing from the Day's End Directory:

MT, SUPERIOR: Quartz Flat CG (NF). Sites on both sides of I-90, ~75 total. BD. Tables, firerings, grills. Fresh W at threaded spigots around CG, & fill sta. Flush & vault toilets. D on both sides ($2 if not staying at CG). Trashcans. $10, S/A Pass 1/2. 16-day limit. 10 mi E of Superior, from I-90 MM 58, either direction, follow signs at end of RA. No return to RA from CG (1-way drive to I-90). A tunnel connects the 2 CG sides (14' clearance in middle, tapers to ~12' at sides). Paved rds & pkg areas, sites 40+'. 6 pullthru sites in loop A (WB side). View of Clark Fork Riv from some NE side sites. Both sides heavily shaded. Trail to riv. RR near SW side sites. 2900' elev. Verizon 4-5 bars. Always open sites. Rod & Carolyn Hatcher #30779 Jul 06. Last updated by Ken & Joan Tarkin #46102 Jun 17.

You can see that it is quite helpful information. Some decoding: CG = campground, BD = boondocking (aka no hookups), W = water,  D = dump, S/A = senior adult - Federal Golden Age Passport, E = east, MM = mile marker, RA = rest area, WB = west bound, RR = Railroad.

My view on google maps satellite view:

link to google maps

I had listed this as a potential place to stop, in case we got a late start from Newport, but it was only about 1:30pm when we got there, so we decided to continue on to Missoula. I thought this was a great idea, to have a campground right at the rest area for those who need to stop for a while.

More about Missoula in another post!