Heyburn State Park – Hawley’s Landing

Rain. This post is all about rain. We’ve been watching with great sadness all that is unfolding in and around Yellowstone. That is a disaster that’s going to take years to fix, and some of the damage looks unimaginably difficult to repair. Then again, I thought Highway 1 could never recover from some of the big slides, and it has.

Meanwhile, the avid biker among us is struggling. Richard is hard wired to love the sun and has a difficult time in the darkness of winter, even in California, and even with one of those UV simulating lights. We both know he would never survive if we moved to some place rainier. Meanwhile, my heritage is Danish and German, so I’m not so great in the heat. I guess you could say we complement each other, and any given weather event will probably only bum one of us out. I will admit though, with all the flood warnings showing up in my weather app, I was becoming less entranced by the pitter patter of rain on the roof. And I don’t like driving in rain at all.

But drive I did, and most of the route from Dayton, WA to Plummer, ID was not bad. I far prefer lonely, less trafficked roads during weather so that I can go as slow as I want. This worked until the last ten miles where I had to get onto Highway 95, and there were sections where the eager beavers behind me could not pass. Not my favorite. But we made it safe, pulled into our site, and discovered the electric hookups were not working. Every time Richard tried to turn on the power at the pole, the breaker on the pole tripped. I decided it was margarita time for me and made a comforting dinner of Vadouvan Chicken and Mango Chutney with green beans and mustard seed rice. Yum.

We woke to rain and very little filtered water in our Pur water pitcher. More rain and high winds were in the forecast and we were supposed to depart Heyburn, the start of the bike trail Richard has been looking forward to, and move to the midpoint of the trail, where he had expected to be able to ride to on his bike. The situation was dire, so I called an audible. There were walk up sites available at Heyburn for that night, the one right next to us in fact. So, Tuesday became a buoy day; a day of troubleshooting the electric, maybe purchasing something in town to fix it, and a trip to the Coeur d’Alene Walmart, to get a new water pitcher filter. That turned out to be a very good call.

As far as the electric hookups go, we still have a mystery on our hands. The site we moved into showed the same behavior with the breaker on the pole tripping. We got lots of excellent advice from our Alto Owners Facebook group, and we tried an experiment where we ran the generator to see if that would power the systems. It did. So that told us at least that it was not the 30-amp cable that was the problem. It also told us the converter system works. But while we thought it could conceivably be the power pole, it seemed unlikely there would be two bad poles while everyone else in the loop was fine. This was confirmed later when someone pulled into the site we left and plugged in with no issues. So, we don’t currently know what the problem is, but we were fine on battery power and could have recharged with the generator if it became a worry. Maybe we were just wet somewhere and that was shorting something?

We drove over to Coeur d’Alene anyway, if for no other reason than to see the town and do city things. It is a beautiful city, with all the amenities you could want, and more boat storage facilities than I have ever seen. We found the Walmart and, judge if you must, but we felt instantly calmed. They even had full shelves of our brand preferred RV TP. We got more, just because now we can’t possibly run out, and that felt comforting.

After that, we went searching for a well rated place to have dinner but had no idea that it would be so fun. The place we thought was a restaurant was actually a food truck, parked in a lot full of other food trucks. There were all kinds of options, including BBQ and curry, but we went with the highly rated place, Las Brasas Mexican Grill, and it was sooooo good. We got street tacos with a side of rice and chips and salsa.

We returned to Dory fully recharged, even if she wasn’t. We woke up on Wednesday to blue skies, clear forecasts, and filtered water in the pitcher. Heyburn State Park is a very nice place, even in the rain. The Coeur d’Alene bike trail goes right through it, with nearby Plummer as the starting point. There is a boat launch onto a great big lake called Chatcolet (chat-co-let), which is on the southern end of Coeur d’Alene Lake. There is a nice little Visitor Center with helpful people and a relief map too, showing tons of hiking trails. The Hawley’s Landing campground has electric hookups (normally speaking) and a good dump. There was great cell service for both of us, which was instrumental in being able to contact the Altoistes brain trust, and to be able to change reservations last minute. This is the place to be to start the 70-mile bike trail, and there is so much more we would love to explore in the future.

Total miles from Lewis and Clark Trail SP: 131.8, 19.6 mpg, 3 hours 41 min going as slow as possible. Site 17, then 44. Both had electric and water hookups, not sure why electric didn’t work. They looked like brand-new power poles. None of our breakers ever tripped. Good dump, potable water. Great cell service for both.