Day 8 – Idaho to Seattle

Another reason I stopped close to the Idaho border for the night was so that I could see Coeur d’Alene and the area around it.  This was important to me for many reasons, but mostly because the very brilliant film Smoke Signals is about Indians on the Coeur d’Alene reservation, and though the offensive United States map that I’m using doesn’t include reservations (racist bastards) I figure the city is called Coeur d’Alene, how far could it actually be from the rez?  Turns out, not that far, but far enough for me to see nothing of it, not even from a distance.   Oh well, the drive was beautiful anyway and I had other reasons to be curious about Coeur d’Alene – one being that my friend’s dad moved there several years ago and they visit a lot, so it was nice to see where they’re always going, and two because Coeur d’Alene has a famous golf course that I want to visit.

Now ordinarily I’m opposed to the idea of playing 18 holes of golf, I mean who has that kind of patience and tolerance for boredom?  However my proclivity for boats totally supersedes my aversion to 18 holes of golf – the hole I’m talking about lies in the middle of a lake.  So you tee off, work your way down the fairway, and if you’re lucky, land your ball on the little island in the lake.  Then comes the good part!!!!  You take a boat to get to the hole so you can putt your ball in.  The only reason I ever agreed to tolerate golf in the first place was so I that could go off roading with the golf carts on our super wildernessy ghetto course at the lake.  But Coeur d’Alene has a course that can not only satisfy my need for golf cart speed but boating as well?  How cool is that?  It’s the triathlon of golfing! Dude! I’ve been known to be pretty slutty over boats, hell, my idea of the perfect life is one where you take a boat to the grocery store, so this is just too much to pass up.  One day, my friends, one day I will conquer the boating golf course.

Naturally, I didn’t see the course from the highway but it added to the allure of Coeur d’Alene even so.  Shortly thereafter I passed into eastern Washington State.  First there was Spokane, which I was curious about, partly because of the weirdness of there being a big city in eastern Washington (I’ll explain that in a second) and partly because of persons I’ve met who are actually from Spokane.  Turns out it looks like a pretty cool town, though isolated like Perth.

Then it was on to the eastern Washington I heard about oh so many years ago.  Back when one of my closest friends from high school headed up to Seattle to attend the famous U-Dub, she reported the most astonishing phenomena – cowboys and quick to settle down cowgirls.  Apparently U-Dub has a large population of eastern Washingtonians and apparently it’s like hangin’ with Texans – as in, they’re hard core into country music, they wear cowboy hats and all the girls seem to run off and marry their cowboy men by the time they’re twenty then promptly start making cowboy babies.  For two girls from a southern California community most resembling that of The O.C. (actually exactly resembling it since it was shot entirely where we were raised and not in Orange County at all) this was the most incredible thing we’d ever encountered.

Rumour had it (because I had no actual evidence to go on) that when you got east of the Cascade Mountains (which border Seattle) the whole state turned into this dry wasteland (a la Texas).  OK, not necessarily a wasteland but that’s how I see Texas and I always imagined that’s what people were describing.  Turns out it wasn’t that far from the truth.  Once you leave Spokane the state is just barren, depressing even.  Though after a couple of hours you come upon the most spectacular sight when you approach and cross the Columbia River and it stays pretty interesting from there.

Unfortunately though, eastern Washington doesn’t resemble Minnesota at all (more like Alaska as you approach the Cascades), so there’ll be no cheating a bunch of scenes in my aforementioned film, we will indeed need to shoot our exteriors in Minnesota (though we’re still shooting most of the film in Seattle).  But no worries, my “disappointment” was quickly tapered when I happened upon Roslyn, Washington at the eastern foot of the Cascades.  I had no idea I’d be driving past Roslyn.  Damn!  If I wasn’t in such a hurry to get to see Yoko and Shota, I’d totally get off the highway and head into town.

The reason I get so excited about Roslyn is that it is the town that Northern Exposure was shot in.  I knew it was in Washington and that it was not far from Seattle but I totally thought it was up north, now that I know it’s off highway 90, I am so going back.  For those of you that know the show (and those of you that don’t should definitely start watching it), one of the many little signifiers that I’m so happy they kept in the show is in the opening credits sequence when they show the Roslyn Cafe mural.  Very cool.  One day people…  But, instead of stopping I flew through the gorgeous Cascades and on into my new love – Seattle – by lunchtime.