Time to relax

When we arrived in Spokane yesterday I was tempted to title this blog entry as "Welsh Weather in Washington". We had heavy rain for two straight days, following us from Glacier National Park, MT, through Idaho and into Washington State. I can't complain too much, though, since we've had unseasonably mild weather for most of the last two months which allowed us to see places we wouldn't normally have expected to visit in winter months.

In the past week we've been in four states - Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Washington. It's never been our intention to rush from place to place or to pay flying visits to National Parks just to tick them off a list. However, it's felt a bit like that recently. We needed to get to Spokane quite quickly to get some work done on the RV before we set off through Canada to Alaska. Fortunately, Nina's sister and her husband own a place a Spokane where we can stay for a week or so whilst our RV is being worked on.

It's truly beautiful here. The house is situated on the bank of the Spokane River actually inside Riverside State Park at Nine Mile Falls. As I mentioned, when we arrived yesterday morning, it was bucketing down and continued to rain all day. However, today the weather is fine and the wildlife is out in abundance - including two bald eagles.

The children are all doing well. They're definitely looking forward to staying in one place for the next week, though. I also think they're just about ready to mutiny if we ask them to hike through snow again anytime soon. All three of them are progressing well with their schoolwork. It's not always easy to get the boys to settle down into their work, but even so, they're doing way better than I was expecting before we started our trip. It's also interesting to look back at the photographs of them from the past seven months, or so, and see how they've changed. That's probably not something I would have noticed so much if we weren't taking this journey.