Funeral begins with F-U-N

Spokane is just over 5 hours from Salmon, and going to my Grandma's funeral was going to be a 24-hour trip for me. I chose to go without Josh and the boys, but worried about driving alone for the long distance in such a short time. The road from here to there goes over multiple mountain passes, with no cell phone or radio reception in several places, and I was afraid of falling asleep. So I asked my friend KIMI to come along. After we got to the hotel, she asked me "Why does Funeral start with FUN?" And it took me a minute to figure out what she meant!

We decided to make the most of the road trip. On Sunday night, I visited with my Grandpa while she worked on homework at the hotel. Then we ate dinner together at Denny's. We ate our hungry hearts out!! And got super bloated and overly full in the process. So, we decided to go swimming back at the hotel to burn off all the calories. We were the only ones in the pool that late at night, and we enjoyed it! We laughed and soaked in the hot tub until exhaustion set in.

The next morning was the funeral, and she came with me and recorded the program for the rest of my family. After we left Spokane, we stopped at a really neat park in Couer d'Alene that is dedicated as a 9/11 memorial playground.

We played on all the cool "Fire-Truck" themed toys. My favorite was the giant Firemans Hat, with a pole on one end and a slide on the other.

Then we looked at the 9/11 memorial model of the WTC. There was a diagram of all the buildings surrounding the twin towers in New York, listing the name of each building, and how much damage was done to each one because of the collapse of the towers. It was amazing to me.
There was also a plaque listing all the firefighters in Idaho who had lost their lives while serving. I checked to make sure Jeff Allen was on the list, a firefighter from Salmon who died in 2003. There was some really neat re-bar sculptures of Firefighters and Police Officers surrounding the memorial area. They were larger than life, and really made an impression on me.

We got back in the car, and drove for quite a while before our next stop: the Cataldo Mission. We got there just minutes before 5:00, which is their closing time, so we didn't tour it inside. But we did take some photos of the place.

We also got a few photos of a dead squirrel lying in the road by the parking lot (we got a few strange looks from drivers passing us by, too)!!!

We stopped again in Missoula for a little bit of shopping and eating, and drove over the last mountain pass before Salmon. We tried to take a self-portrait with the Idaho sign in the background at the top of the summit, but all you can see of it is a little blue blur above my head. But you can definitely see the snow we encountered (the two white circles)!

We were so ready to be back in our hometown! We had a good time and I was SO glad Kimi came with me, but I was physically and emotionally beat by the time I got home at midnight.