Last weekend Ben’s sister Beth came to visit.  We decided to take a road trip to Northern Idaho, an area that Ben and I hadn’t yet explored.  There’s a popular destination called Coeur d’Alene which is on a lake in a mountainous area.  Also we heard about a cool rails-to-trails bike trail that we were really excited to try out.

We drove 7-hours Friday night and Saturday morning to get to Coeur d’Alene.  The drive was long, but really pretty – windy mountain roads, rivers and canyons, golden-colored wheat fields, and small towns.  After arriving, we had the afternoon in Coeur d’Alene, so we took out the kite to take some photos… you can see a few of those in Ben’s last post.  Here’s another good one, and also a photo of our reward after a long day of driving and kite-flying.

Later that evening we hiked around Tubbs Hill, a hill near downtown Coeur d’Alene which juts out into the lake

Sunday we had a full day in Coeur d’Alene and we wanted to see more of the lake.  So we rented Kayaks in the morning and paddled around.  We didn’t get very far – it was windy and the water was pretty choppy, plus it turns out that kayaking is tiring!  But we found a cute little beach to park at and eat lunch.  Here’s some photos from that adventure.

Later that evening we drove a scenic road around part of the lake, looking for something fun to do and photo opportunities.  At one pull-off, we found a beach full of perfect skipping rocks and we couldn’t resist…

At another pull-off we noticed a nice breeze… so we sent our kite up towing the camera.  If you haven’t flown a kite since you were a kid, I suggest trying it sometime.  It’s surprisingly fun!  The sun was low in the sky, so we got some pretty sky photos too.

We were also lucky to catch a beautiful sunset over the lake that night.

I’ll post about the rest of the trip soon – including photos from our bike ride!

-Alonna