Coeur d' Alene

On July 22nd, we embarked on the last and longest road trip of our summer.  In some way or another, my dad made a business deal with some real estate that included a week in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho at a cabin on the river every summer until the deal was closed.  So for the last 2 years my family has had the opportunity to enjoy a little piece of paradise for a week.  Last year Spencer and I missed out on the vacation because we were in Ghana, but this year we had no intentions of being left out.  

Here are some of our favorite moments from the week:

July 23rd, we wanted to get Maggie out on the water and see how she would enjoy it.

Spencer let her down from the dock and then held onto her while she floated and played around.

She loved it until a boat drove by and really started rocking her little boat.  She was not a big fan of that...

So we took her inside to the large Jacuzzi and let her bathe for a while without any waves. 

The Jacuzzi was at the perfect height that she could barely touch bottom and bounce herself up and down.  She loved it!

Sunday, the 24th, we went on a nice long boat ride through the river and into and all around Coeur d'Alene Lake.  It was gorgeous, and especially fun to have Maggie along for the ride.

She's never been on a boat before and was super cute with all the wind blowing in her face.

I was a little worried that she wouldn't be very happy, but she never even complained.

She was even lulled to sleep by the boat.  

I love it when she cuddles with me!

On the boat ride we rode up to this amazing bridge.  I hate that pictures never really do them justice, but believe me, it was pretty cool.

Monday and Tuesday were play days on the boats and tubes

We even got to take a family ride

Mother duck with her ducklings.  CUTE!

Then Spencer got the ride of his life.

If anyone cares to watch some of his rides - they were pretty exciting.

Tuesday night the girls went into Coeur d'Alene to do a little window shopping.

We saw this moose and all the girls wanted a picture with it.

The last and final exciting adventure we went on before heading home Thursday afternoon, was on Wednesday.  Everyone packed up and drove to the border of Idaho and Montana, where there is a 15 mile bike trail.  It's called The Hiawatha.  It used to be a railroad line that was basically ripped up and made into a major tourist/biker attraction.  So yeah, we rented some bikes and little trailer for Maggie and headed on up.

Here's Maggie, all ready to go!

Starting out, Maggie was fine, but there are a few tunnels that are completely dark along the trail.  All you have to see with is a little lamp on the front of your bicycle.  Now the 15 mile trail actually starts out with the longest of the tunnels.  It's a mile and half long.  Well, about halfway through, Maggie got sick of the dark or got uncomfortable or something, but she screamed... the whole way through.  We even stopped in the middle of the pitch black cave to try and make her happy, but it did nothing - she continued to scream.  Luckily though, I was able to feed her when we got out, she fell asleep and kept quiet for the next hour or so of the ride.

The scenery of this ride was gorgeous, and I loved all the bridges that had been built from one ravine to another.  They definitely had the best views of the landscape.

When Maggie woke we tried about 5 different ways to keep her comfortable in the little trailer - but she really wasn't having it.

So we gave up with the trailer and resorted to plan B.  (We were happy we even had a plan B) 

Once we put her on Spencer's back, we didn't hear another complaint - EVER.  It was perfect.

Once we finished the bike ride we actually had to wait at the bottom for a shuttle to come pick us up and take us back to the top.

And once we were back at the top we had to ride back through the mile and a half tunnel that we started with.  Here we are, ready to get going again.

I was seriously worried that Maggie was going to make the tunnel another nightmare for us, but she liked her little backrest so much that the dark tunnel only put her to sleep.  It was absolutely perfect!

And that was essentially the end of our trip.  I will not go into the details of Spencer getting pulled over and ticketed for the first time in his life, because he would go on to tell you how much he hates Idaho cops and wishes we had only made it 10 more minutes so he could have at least gotten pulled over by a Montana cop.  That's a story that should probably be left in the dark and forgotten about... which is what we keep praying the insurance company will do :)  I guess we'll see.

I must say though, considering this was the last vacation of the summer, it was definitely a good one to end on.  I was really sad to have the week end so quickly.  Hopefully we'll get to go again next year!