A National Forest Campground Accessed Through an I-90 Rest Area

Day 69  Monday August 22, 2016            Lolo National Forest, Quartz Flats Campground

319 towing miles            11.2 mpg

We stayed hitched up last night for a fast get-a-way this morning. 

One of the worse RV parks we've stayed in and were glad to leave.

We wanted to get from Washington to Montana, close enough to be a few hundred miles from the Yellowstone area.

But before we could leave, we noticed our black and gray water tanks were at 55%, a surprise because we dumped two days ago.  They don’t fill up that fast.  We may have not been level when we dumped.  So that makes one more chore before we leave, dump tanks.  Our site had full hookups so I was able to do it there.  We left at 07:05.  Drove six miles south to Omak where we stopped at the local Safeway for a few things like bread and milk.  It wasn’t a very big Safeway.  Then next door was Burger King and we tried their Egg-Normous breakfast burrito.  Which was very good.  Had to fuel up, too.  It wasn’t until 09:30 before we hit the road.

Worked our way down US-97 to WA-174 to US-2 to I-90.  174 follows the Columbia River.  On both sides of the river, for miles, are fruit orchards.  Mostly apples, but also peaches.  I wrote about that two years ago when we followed the Columbia River Valley on the way to Oregon.  This time we got to see the Grand Coulee Dam, although I missed the visitor center, so I kept going.

We got on I-90 west of Spokane and had to pass through the city, but it was quite easy.  Spokane looked like a nice city, as far as cities go.  Here's the desert type scenery of western Washington until we got to Spokane.

Grand Coulee reservoir.  Did not get photo of dam.

I can see where I'm going to be an hour from now,

We could see this wildfire for miles. 

Coming up on Spokane.

It is in an area surrounded by mountain scenery.  After Spokane, it became more mountainous with heavily forested peaks and valleys. 

We crossed into Idaho and stopped at the 1^st rest area which also was a visitor center and a watercraft inspection area.  These are common in western states because they don’t want Michigan zebra mussels messing up their waterways.  I had never been to one of these because I never traveled out west with a watercraft.  They asked me what lakes I was in and where they were.  None of the lakes I mentioned in British Columbia or Alaska were in their database.  They let us go after looking the canoe over.

Couer d’Alene, ID was the next small city or large town we passed through.  It is in a beautiful mountain valley with a beautiful alpine lake nearby.  It was pretty much an up-scale tourist area.  The rest of I-90 through Idaho was through heavily forested mountains and beautiful scenery.  It is amazing how they can build an interstate through mountains like that.  It was very curvy with 7% or 8% grades.  The part of Idaho we went through was the skinny part in the north section of the state.  Here's our pictures from Spokane through Idaho and Montana.

This fire was right off the highway and there was no one fighting it.

Our destination was Quartz Flats Campground near the town of Superior, MT.  It is in the Lolo National Forest.  It is accessed by getting off at a rest area and the campground access is right there.  It has loops on both sides of the highway (I-90).  There is a tunnel under the highway, actually a big culvert that connects the two sides.  We stayed on the west-bound side because it had some nice pull-throughs overlooking the Clark Fork River.  It was a very nice campground but you could hear the traffic noise.  We arrived there at 3:00 PM Mountain Time.  Lost another hour due to time zone change. 

Marsha's campsite picture.

Ed's campsite picture.

This rest area also had a Montana Fish & Game Watercraft Inspection Station also.  It was a little stricter than Idaho.  Many more questions and he was going through a checklist with my name and address and filling in all my answers.  We got a certificate that we passed in case we have to pass through another one. 

We had cell signal there and I was able to post three blog drafts that were ready to go, Whitehorse day 1 and 2, and Big Creek (another chance at Grayling).  When you receive these postings, look at the date they were written, not posted.