Potholes State Park (Leaving)
I drove through Spokane and Coeur d' Alene without incident or notice. By 11:30 am MST I had found a campsite just over the Montana/ Idaho border on highway 200 on the Bull River near Noxon, MT.
The site was nice under mature fir trees and right on the river and included free firewood. For $7 per night it was a good deal. I had a place to stay the night. I took a short hike along the river. It was nice and peaceful except for some road construction on the other side. The hosts had warned me that abear had been coming tghrough the camp every morning so to watch out when I went hiking. I did not see any bears.
I took a short bike ride to the two "grocery stores" about a mile away. One store had more customers than it could handle. It sold ice cream cones and sandwiches from a deli. All the canned goods it had were dented and not too cheap. I wnet across the street to what looked like a recently built store that had not customers. The prices were about the same, but the cans looked in better condition. I returned to camp with what I needed for a day or two.
The camp was quiet most of the afternoon. I took a very quick dip in the river. It was very, very cold. I spent the afternoon reading in peace and quiet.
On entry to the site, I had noticed a sign welcoming people to a two-family reunion. The apparent old-timers of the family started to arrive in the late afternoon and the younger generation the early evening. They probably had 25 people spread over 4 sites. Except for blowing a loud school bus horn and listening to the elder males drone on with their stories, it was a pretty peaceful affair.
Around 7pm the place got busy. All the sites were full but people kept coming in to check. The river was smooth as glass and was flowing in the oppoiste direction. I took a couple of more dips and tried a few casts to no avail. The water was clear enough to see the fish in the stream.
About 8:30pm my neighbor started up his ancient generator and I was forced to put on my headphones while typing up web pages until he turned it off at 9:55pm. He was here when I pulled in and highly recommended this site. He said he had been here a week. I asked if it was quiet here. He just kind of looked at me sheepishly and did not answer. I don't mind and hour and a half of generator noise, but why not run it during the day when people have options to go somewhere else and are not trying to wind down before bed.
I finished "A Maze of Death" by PKD before retiring. It was pretty good, kind of like Agathie Christie's "Ten Little Indians" only on a planet instead of in a house. In this 1970 novel PKD describes pretty accurately modern developments and plans for developments in virtual reality machines (although he does not use that term). The application for it in his story is to a place for people on long space voyages to go to in an effort to relieve stress to prevent them from killing each other. The ability of PKD to come up with these kinds of forward thinking logical ideas is interesting to me.
I planned to stay at least another night. I did not feel I would find another place as peaceful for $7, so why move?