Since the drive from North Cascades to Glacier National Park would have taken 10 hours, we stayed two nights at Blackwell Island RV Park in Coeur d’Alene, ID to split it up. My initial thought with reserving that campground was to relax on the lake for a day, do some laundry and stock up on groceries. But then I realized how close we were to the Route of the Hiawatha, which some friends had ridden, enjoyed and recommended. The weather ended up being too cold to care to spend time on the water, and we were fortunate that the weather forecast changed to no longer call for rain all day on the Hiawatha.
So, we drove an hour from our campground to ride our bikes on the Route of Hiawatha, which is a 15 mile trail that has 10 Tunnels, 7 Trestle Bridges & Stunning Views! Unfortunately, it was cloudy and only in the 50s, and I forgot to take my gloves, but was able to pull my long sleeves down enough to help keep my hands from freezing. It did end up raining on us for about 5-10 long minutes, which made us appreciate the non-rainy part of the ride all the more! The trail itself was not very crowded, and it was fun to go through the tunnels and across the trestle bridges. A unique experience, for sure. But when we got to the bottom, there was a really long line to get on the shuttle bus to take us back near the parking lot. In hind sight, we should have just ridden our bikes back instead of waiting in line, since it ended up taking 2 hours to get on the bus, then another 30 minutes to drive back to the first 1.6 mile tunnel, which we then biked back through to get to our truck. I think we could’ve done the bike ride back in about 1.5 hours, saving at least an hour. If the weather had been better or if we could have at least been sure we wouldn’t get caught in the rain again, we would have definitely ridden our bikes back; but we just kept hoping the line would move faster than it actually did. Oh well, the ride was still a cool experience and I’m glad we did it.
On our way back to Coeur d’Alene we stopped at the cute/quirky old town called Wallace, ID to eat dinner at The Fainting Goat, which ended up being really good! We had a 20 minute wait, so we walked around the town. It seems like they have intentionally tried to keep it in the past, with tons of antique stores; and even the “regular” store fronts had old stuff in the display windows. We also saw signs talking about how many steps we were from “The Center of the Universe”, at Bank & 6th Streets. We found the spot, but did not find an explanation of why they made that claim. I later googled it and found this intriguing explanation: The reasoning is delightfully tongue-in-cheek and based on probabilism (a philosophical idea): No one can prove that Wallace isn’t the center of the universe. Therefore, it must be. As locals often say: “Why not? Prove it isn’t.”
Before heading back to the RV, we drove around Coeur d’Alene a bit, got some ice cream at Panhandle Cone & Coffee, then went grocery shopping. It ended up being a great day, even with the suboptimal weather!
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