Coeur d'Alene or: Puppy's First Camping Trip

Getting the hell out of Dodge on weekends has almost become an imperative. On our way driving from Wisconsin to Washington we passed through Coeur d'Alene, a touristy town with replete with forest and a big lake. We headed up north to go camping on the outskirts of town, you know, experience the solitude of the forest and get away from it all.

Oh hai, interstate.

Well, we got the forest, but quiet was in short supply. The otherwise acceptable campground was situated about 100 m from the interstate. Still counts...

This was the first time we've tried to take Sammy camping. He loves hiking and generally running around outside like a crazed animal, but we weren't sure how he'd fare sleeping in a tent. The verdict is that he wasn't crazy about it...every time we'd roll over or move in any way he'd jump up and dart over to the door in the hopes that we were getting up to let him out. When either of us would leave the tent, he'd stick his head out the open zipper part of the door, plant his feet and refuse to move. Passive resistance, he was like a furry little Gandhi.

The trusty Forest Service dirt roads took us into some quiet areas.

Fancy terlet.

We hiked up to what was billed as a 'lookout' area.

Lookout...for someone shooting at you.

It may have been a lookout point a decade ago, but the treeline was way to high to actually see much of anything. The lookout building had since been used extensively for target practice. We had to find our own lookout points.

My spouse spied a store called CDA Yarn and Fiber downtown. He seemed to think that hadn't bought any yarn for too long and that I needed to get some. And really, who am I to argue?

Something called "Plymouth Earth Homestead". I'm a sucker for undyed yarns.

Malabrigo, pretty standard stuff.

We tried to get Sammy to go canoeing. He's done it before in Madison, figured it would be no big deal, right?

Dubious.

Mmm, yummy beef jerky if you come down here!

Big baby.

Hate you guys.

The second night, we were going for a nighttime walk through the campground, and spouse comes up to me and says, "Do you know what Joe Tiller looks like??" and I'm all, "Bitch, please, of course I know what Joe Tiller looks like." I suppose you might not, unless you are also a Purdue graduate (or just a fan)--JT was the football coach at Purdue while we were students there and was, how do you say, kind of a big deal.

"Go look in that RV and tell me that is not Joe Tiller." Come on, no way. So of course I had to creep up to the trailer and peer in. And the guy hanging out in the kitchen in what was presumably his jammies did indeed look like big Joe. But he's a generic walrus-esque looking older gentleman, so I really needed a better look, ala Hank in Breaking Bad. 

Hank suspects that this is the mobile meth lab RV...

Spoiler alert: it was an older couple in their undies playing cards.

OK, it didn't work out so well for Hank, so we refrained from excessive espionage, but a check of the license plates (Wyoming, where he retired) and a quick look at some articles on what he was up to these days (traveling across the west in an RV with his wife) confirms that we had a celebrity fellow camper. We made plans to don some Purdue sweatshirts the next day and stroll by while they were having breakfast.

And then it rained all next morning. They never came out of the camper! We were relegated to creepy stalkers. Maybe we'll run into him on our next camping trip.