We left Kanaskat-Palmer State Park late Saturday morning for a four-hour drive of 234 miles back to Country Lane RV Park and Campground in Wilbur, Washington where we had stayed a couple of weeks earlier. I was extra-alert and careful as we drove onto the Dry Falls Dam. If you read our post about that leg of our trip, you already know why. Fortunately we had no issues.
Until we got about 5 miles away from the campground. Then, as she always does when we are approaching our destination, Cindy pulled out the three-ring binder where we keep all our reservation information for each stop. She keeps tabs on our site number, whether we have water, electric, sewer or all three, check-in and check-out times, etc. My wonderful wife does an excellent job of keeping us on track. If it was just me I’d be driving around aimlessly stopping wherever I could, lol.
So she looks down at the open page in the binder and asks me, “What’s today’s date? It’s the 23rd, right?”
“No”, I said, “it’s the 22nd. Tomorrow is the 23rd” and I laughed thinking she just read the date wrong. But she hadn’t.
“Oh no! I booked this stay for the 23rd instead of the 22nd!” She was pretty upset with herself. I assured her we were probably ok, they most likely would let us stay that night and use what we already paid for the following night as payment. If they didn’t, we’d find something else (not really much of a chance for that in the area) or spend the night on the side of the road somewhere. But we were hopeful they would have a site for us since we were counting on full hookups in order to empty/flush our tanks and fill our fresh water tank as well as filling our empty propane tank (we have two).
And as I said to her, “You’ve been doing this for two years and this is the first time there’s been an error made. Frankly, with as much as you constantly have to keep up with, there’s a high probability it should have happened sooner or more often. But it hasn’t because you’re that good.”
We got there and, sure enough, they were completely booked up. But the owner/manager remembered us from our last visit and so very graciously offered to move her motorhome into an empty patch of grass overnight so we could have a site to stay in and simply transferred our payment for the next night over to that night. I thought that was very, very kind and considerate of them and we thanked them profusely that night and the next morning before we left.
We didn’t bother to unhitch since we were there for only one night. And we were so wrapped up in what was happening that I completely forgot to take photos of Nomad in the site.
Sunday morning July 23rd we were gone from Country Lane around 10am and drove 222 miles to Quartz Flat Campground in the Lolo National Forest for a one-night dry camping stay. It was 95 degrees when we arrived so I was glad I had charged up all the batteries for the fans we use.
The way you come into this campground was one of the strangest we’ve seen in our travels so far. You pull into a rest stop on the right side (Southbound) of Interstate 90, drive to the back of the rest stop, take a road that leads to one part of the campground BUT you drive past that and go into a tunnel that runs UNDER the Interstate to the opposite side (Northbound) where you find the other part of the campground. The campground is literally bisected by the Interstate highway.
And that tunnel was JUST wide enough and high enough for us to squeak through very carefully right in the middle. Poor Cindy was sure we would scrape the roof or sides, but as you can see in the accompanying video we made it through without a scratch.
Again, a one-night stay so we didn’t unhitch. Spent the daylight hours reading, had dinner and then used our iPads for reading when it got dark. But we were in bed shortly after the sun went down anyway because we were still recuperating from a wonderfully busy two weeks with our youngest grandchildren and we’re old, lol.
Next up: back to Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park.
Loved reading your stories highlighting Country Lane Campground.!! We are so glad you stayed with us and hope if your back this way you will stop in again.!! Safe travels out there.!!