six girls and their favorite guy: Idaho/Washington

36 hours after arriving home from California we were off on another adventure... thanks to our timeshare.

Once again I put in for like 30 places around the west back in February... (all within a 12 hour driving distance).

I added all of the free summer weeks we had.

And waited... for a couple months. Finally, (after declining one of the exchanges) I got an email about our exchange to Blanchard Idaho.

Yep, I'd never heard of it either.

But I knew Coeur d' alene was about an hour from it. Coeur d'alene is a place I'd never been to (I don't think??) But my dad spent a LOT of time there for a couple years of my childhood working on a hospital so I was definitely familiar with it.

And I've heard from several people that it is beautiful + I knew the Hiawatha Trail was pretty close... and that was on my bucket list... so I accepted it.

Blanchard is right on the Washington/Idaho border and is about an hour from the Canada border.

It took a long time to get there. haha

But we did have a couple stops along the way that added more time...

Our first was the Rexburg Idaho Temple..

We had an appointment for baptisms @ 8 am which meant we headed out on our road trip just after 5 am.

Our next appointment was in Helena Montana @ 2 PM.

Helena was dedicated on June 18th,

so it's brand new!

Helena is also the first temple built modularly.

The temple was constructed in Alabama in 25 "modules".

Then trucked to Montana and assembled in TWO weeks.

It's quite remarkable.

+ beautiful!

It's definitely small @ 10,000 sq feet... in fact the Endowment room and Sealing room are called "flexible" rooms.

Meaning the same room can be used for either purpose.

It was worth the drive out of our way to make it to this Temple.

Here's a diagram of how it was constructed...

There were other stops for potty breaks + food.

Which meant we made it to Blanchard @ about 9:30 PM pacific time.

So it really took us closer to 16 hours to get there.

But we made it! ;)

The next morning Saturday...

we made the hour drive to Spokane.

Where yep... we had another baptism appointment.

The girls list of Temples they've done baptisms in is growing...

(23 for Jadyn and 16 for Lydia)

but so are the numbers of Temples under construction in just Utah alone!

We had a super yummy lunch @ The Melting Pot.

Then headed over to "Spokane Falls".

We were all UNDERWELMED by the "Falls".

Obviously the water wasn't flowing super fast that time of year, cuz the pictures on the internet made it look INCREDIBLE. But we've "seen" that now. haha

Honestly, we couldn't think of anything else to do in Spokane.

So we drove back the resort, explored a little, played some games and a round of mini-golf.

These two messed around at the park for a bit.

Then we drove 15 minutes north to Newport Washington for a rodeo.

We had such a fun time!

The next morning, Sunday, we headed to Church in Sandpoint ID... 45 minutes east.

There was ONE church closer but we picked this one, because after Church we were off to

Lake Pend Orielle...

This lake is the largest lake in Idaho, and the 5th deepest lake in the US.

We had a great time relaxing on the beach and floating around on the paddle board.

It was a hot day,

we didn't last too long in the sun.

and yes paddle boarding for me looks like one of my girls doing the work and me enjoying the ride... EVERY time. ;)

I looked it up to see why there is a Statue of Liberty at the end of this dock.

Apparently 20 years ago a lady had it in her yard in Sandpoint and when she passed away her family donated it to the city.

This is where it ended up. haha

We headed back to the resort and were so excited to have Saige and Keaton finally arrive.

They also agreed the ride was long... and since they were only with us for like 38 hours... the ride must have seemed even longer to them!

Pizza.

A walk around the resort.

Some skipping of rocks.

+ a game of Monopoly that Keaton dominated at.

And we called it a night.

The next morning we were up bright and early for a 1.5 hour drive South/East to Mulan Idaho.

The start of the...

We had watched videos... but still didn't know quite what to expect, how the shuttle worked etc.

One thing I did make sure of was that we had opted to start at the top and bike DOWN and take the shuttle back up. haha

I wouldn't have made it all the way back up on a bike.

Maybe an e-bike... but not the bikes we were using.

It was SUCH an enjoyable ride going down though!!

We checked in at the Lodge of "Lookout Pass" (a ski resort).

Then headed in our car, further down the road where we we found our bikes.

The start of the ride is through a 1.7 mile long tunnel.

It was a little eerie, pretty cold and wet, but so incredible at the same time!

Thank heavens for our lights!

That tunnel is called "St. Paul Pass" or "Taft tunnel" and when you're out of the tunnel you are now back in Montana.

The route of the Hiawatha is a 15 mile downhill... old railroad line. All of the tracks have been removed, and it consists of 10 train tunnels and 7 sky high trestles.

What an experience!!

The scenery was GORGEOUS and we took LOTS of stops for pictures.

Because we stopped so often it took us a LONG time,

but we had a great time along the way!

At this point our bikes were put on our BUS (with the back seats removed).

And we were shuttled back up the hill.

We just had that 1.7 mile dark tunnel to go through again.

We were trying to hurry because we were going to be late for our Silver Mine Tour.

Unfortunately, that tunnel is super dark and wet.

Like water running down the walls and dripping in the middle.

So it was slick.

Like a pasty mud.

Poor Jadyn fell twice and scraped her face and hands.

On the second fall, Saige turned around to see if she was ok.

And she also crashed... really hard.

On the sides of the tunnel there is about a foot deep drainage area and her tire started slipping into that.

I stopped for a second and then we all just kept going cuz Keaton stayed with Saige and said you guys go ahead, I'll walk out with her..

Her fall was honestly in like the last 1/2 mile of the tunnel and then we were right back to the start.

But poor Saige was REALLY hurt.

She came walking her bike out like this.

She really wasn't this happy, but she put on a good show.

POOR THING!!

Jadyn was also cut, and SOOO muddy but didn't say much cuz obviously Saige was worse off + she felt guilty about her turning to help her. :(

So we have Saige sit on a bench and Shane runs to get the car down the road with the first aid kit.

He starts pulling up past the "don't pass this sign" like 10 feet and the workers start freaking out that he can't do that. So I gesture to Saige and say... she needs to be picked up, she's hurt.

They had seen her and really didn't care.

I mean, I'm sure they see really serious accidents on that trail.

But, she was hurting.

So one of the guys gets out his big first aid kit, rinses it off a bit and slaps a butterfly bandage on it and sends us on our way.

Oh, but in the meantime (this big guy with his belly hanging out haha) on a 4 wheeler comes flying up the road yelling HELP! HELP! There's a fire! I need you to call for help!

Those workers REALLY didn't care much about that either.

They were pretty unconcerned and said, "we can't call... I mean we have a radio, but that's it."

UHHHHH

The guy was kind of freaking out because it was HIS campfire that he said, "we must not have put enough water on and it got out of control. It's burning pretty fast."

So they have him show them on a map where it is.

We left... so we didn't see what happened after that.

But I did check to see if there were any wildfires in that area later that night and there weren't... so thankfully they must have got it out fast!!

This is where my mama guilt comes in.

Keaton kept saying we should take her to instacare, but the guy that helped her was like no she'll be fine. And I agreed with him.

So we didn't go to instacare.

And we SHOULD have taken her.

It took Deon telling her by looking at a picture the next day as they were driving home that, "that is very deep Saige, you can see the fatty tissue layer, you should DEFINITELY go to Instacare."

Unfortunately by the time they got to instacare early Wednesday morning it was too late for stitches... which she apparently REALLY should have had.

And there was debris still in it, so it had to be scrubbed and tiny rocks pulled out of it.

UGHHHHHH... I should have listened to Keaton cuz he really wanted to take her. :(

She'll be fine, and it's healing up, but it makes me feel so guilty!

I was anxious to get to this place 25 minutes up the road in Wallace Idaho where we had reservations for a Silver Mine Tour (already paid for). It was @ 4 and we made it at like 4:05. Unfortunately the tour had already left. So they offered for us to come back another day.

We didn't want to drive that far another day, so we went with the "city tour" in exchange.

It was a funny little tour of a super small town that looked like it was 60 years behind.

But it was interesting!

I don't think Saige would have loved walking through the mine anyway.

She was a good sport, but definitely hurting!