On Saturday, the 16th of June, my dad and I left for our Father-Daughter Road Trip! This trip was over six years in the making, originally intended to take place after I graduated from college in 2011 (as my dad had taken my sister on a similar trip at that point in her life) and then planned to happen the July 4 holiday, 2013, from where I was in Lawrence to where my dad was in Colorado Springs to Billings/Missoula/Bozeman, MT. My parents ended up selling their house and moving to Pittsburgh that summer, so we had to put our trip on hold. But this time (I’m looking back at the notes I made in the spring of 2013 and it makes me smile to see) we ended up doing all that we’d originally wanted to, plus a lot more! And, because my parents were considering buying one someday, we rented an RV so my dad could see what it was like! It was such an adventure.

The first day of the trip, we drove 4.5 hours to Walla Walla, WA, just a bit out of the way of our destination for the night, Coeur d’Alene, ID, so we could visit my friend Maria and see her studio where she teaches at Whitman College. First, we had to see Walla Walla’s Museum of Un-Natural History, which was a blast. We went to The Saint and the Sinner for lunch, grabbed my dog from the RV (yes, he came along!) and walked around town/the college campus, stopping in to the toy store Inland Octopus (which has a really cool model train display) and getting ice cream at Bright’s Candies. I didn’t take my camera out that first day, but I took a lot of pictures on my phone and some on my little Fuji – I plan on making a post with those last.

We got in to our campground in Coeur d’Alene after 9 (it was a 3.5-hour drive from Walla Walla) and went straight to bed, only driving through the downtown in the morning. Once we headed out, I texted my friend Lauren in Bigfork, MT, to see if she could meet us at the Miracle of America Museum. Three hours later, the three of us were exploring this insanely awesome place with one of the largest collections of American history, founded in 1981. There are 35 buildings and 340,000 artifacts to explore. The whole time I was thinking about how much Nathaniel would love it, so we have to go back someday soon.

It was an almost 6-hour drive from Polson to our first campground in… Yellowstone! Much of it we had to do in the dark and the pouring rain, so we were relieved to get there. And instantly fall asleep.