Thursday evening and we have arrived in Wenatchee, just a couple of hours outside of Seattle. Tomorrow night we fly back to LA.

Another pleasant drive today - we are so pleased we took the scenic route and not the I90 interstate as we return to Seattle. We have seen sensational mountain and lake views as well as forests.

No quilt shops today but numerous stops to admire the scenery.

Here I sit at a Maccas in Colville, Washington. Last nights hotel was a bust with no wifi so that's why I am typing on a Thursday morning in a Maccas.

Yesterday, apart from the hotel, was a really good day. Lots of sensational scenery as we took the scenic driving cruise from Montana, across Idaho and back into Washington State.

We broke up the trip with 5 quilt shops for Rayls and some breathtaking scenery.

Lots of photos but can't really load them here so will do that tonight at our next hotel in Wenatchee, another lovely scenic and leisurely drive.

I added a photo to this section, its Rayls and I at Glacier National Park and its added because we both like it. Click on the photo for the scenic view.

One of the great things about the drive on these minor roads is there is so little traffic. We often stop the car to admire a view and no car will come past for the 5 minutes or so we are stopped.

Today we reached our destination on this road trip. We drove from Columbia Falls to  Going to the Sun Road at Glacier National Park. Beautiful location. Lake McDonald is very scenic with the snow capped mountain and the coloured stones at the shoreline. These rocks are maroon, dark red, green, blue, and other colours. The rocks of Lake McDonald are coloured because of the iron in them. When they were formed in the eons of the past, they were broken down into small rocks and washed into the lake. The green rocks were formed in deep water and so had less iron.

We spent about 5 hours at the lake, went on a few walking trails and generally lapped  the location.

Around  2pm we headed back towards Kalispell with a stop at Freda's cafe for lunch. It was around a further 200 K's to Libby where we are spending the night. Henry's Restaurant for dinner.

280 K's today as we headed into Montana. We are now in Columbia Falls, less than 30 minutes from our destination of Lake McDonald at Glacier National Park.

We stopped at Mullan for fuel and then headed into Kalispell. We ended up at Wendys for lunch, some fun with our Aussie accent there, got the order in the name of Giry.

Our hotel is in a golf estate similar to the Vines. Lovely location, dinner was a bit tough as it is Memorial Day and many restaurants are closed. We ended up at a Subway.

Started the day in Spokane where we checked out Riverfront Park. The Spokane River winds through and cascades over basalt rock and two dams to create the largest urban waterfall in the USA. It's quite a sight. The best view of the falls comes from the gondola cars of the Spokane Falls SkyRide, we enjoyed our ride on that.

Then we were on the road, I90 heading east. We stopped for lunch at a Cracker Barrel in Smeltsville. We were going to stop in Kellogg but I never saw it and then ended in Wallace, which is in Idaho. In 2004, the Mayor proclaimed the city of Wallace to be the centre of the universe (because it can't be proven otherwise). Today, a manhole cover represents the exact spot of the Center of the Universe, and it is celebrated yearly by the citizens of Wallace.

Wallace seems very historic and is very scenic, I believe the locals are called Wallys.

Started in Morton.

Drove down Highway 12, at a town called Randle, and on a whim, we turned right and headed up to Iron Creek Falls. We assumed it was a small scenic town and after a beautiful and windy drive the GPS got us to nowhere. We started to head back but saw a sign that advised the falls were 500 feet down a track. Glad we saw it as it was a lovely spot, the falls were only a few metres high but such a nice spot. On the way up to the falls we had seen two men walking down the hill towards Randle. We waved to each other, on the way back the men were a bit further down the hill and waved us to stop. One of them advised they were road workers that their truck was stuck in snow and they had to walk back. No phone reception up here. They asked if we could call a partner when we got back to phone range. Instead we drove them back to Randle and had a great chat as we did so. Tom and Peter are part of family of road workers. Peter lives in Mossyrock and was very interested in hearing about Shawn's books.

After dropping off Tom and Peter, and saving them a 6 hour walk, we continued down Highway 22 to Yakima. The town of Packwood had flea markets on both sides of the road. One man was selling Australian Cattle Dogs and Rayls had a nice cuddle with one of the puppies.

Further down Highway 22 and the scenery was awesome, a number of stops at scenic outlooks. We ended up in Yakima around 1:30pm, not a great town, lots of homeless people.

Onto Highway 82 before reaching Interstate 90 and heading towards Spokane. We have stopped in Quincy for the night. A total of 370 kilometres today.

Here I sit in Morton, Washington.

Our day started in the stinky hotel room. Our plan today was to meet up with a friend, Shawn Inmon who is an author and we have communicated on Messenger for a number of years.

We went about 50K's south of Seattle to Tumwater where we met up with Shawn at a Starbucks. Shawn writes books on Time Travel, my favourite genre. Specifically he writes books about people who live life, pass away and then return in a younger version of themselves with all the knowledge and experience of their older selves. These books are set in fictional Middle Falls in Oregon.  Shawn is currently writing his 21st Middle Falls book. He also wrote a couple of books on how he met his wife to be, how they lost each other and then found each other again. Good stories which I am sure Rayls would love - Shawn kindly gave us a copy of each of these books for Rayls to read.

After saying our goodbyes to Shawn we headed further south to Chehalis where we had a much needed late lunch at Applebees and then checked out a Walmart.

Then another 50 k's to Mossyrock which is Shawn's home town and where a lot of the Middle Falls stories are based. Enjoyed a couple of hours there, checked out a lot os sites Shawn refers to in his books.

Then another 20 k's to Morton where we are spending the night. We are coming up to Memorial Day weekend in the USA so going to be a tough few days getting hotels, especially at a reasonable price.

I did find out how to change the Mazda speedometer to mph so all good there but I can't get the cruise control to work, another pain.