August 12, 2008 - New rental car and from Kalispell, MT to Sandpoint, ID

Note: Most photos for this day have not yet been posted.

When speaking to the agency where I rented my car, the clerk said a corporate owned agency was in East Glacier, MT. This was at the opposite side of Glacier National Park from where I was. It would be a long drive. I could have the vehicle towed. When looking up the address on their web site, I found no agency in East Glacier. But, I did find one in Kalispell. The Kalispell office is a licensee. But, they were nice enough to give swap a car for me because they had a few corporate owned cars.

Here are photos of the car after hitting the deer.

I did not want to drive the car when there were lots of people on the road, just in case something went wrong. The company paid for the tow because I bought the liability damage waiver.

Swapping the car was easy and painless. I just had to provide a copy of the patrolman's information exchange and write my own damage report. Then I was provided the keys and had to start the long process of lugging my junk from one car to the next. This has taught me to pack light. I took way too many clothes and I will never use them all on this trip. The new car is slightly smaller and thus everything had to be tightly crammed into the car. It took well over an hour to move everything from one car to the next. The lesson here is for me to pack lightly on any future trips! If I'm not absolutely going to use something, it stays home in the future.

My destination for the evening was Sandpoint, Idaho. This is in the northern section of the state in the panhandle. A non-stop drive from Kalispell to Sandpoint would officially be about three hours. Originally, I planned to see Glacier National Park and arrive in Sandpoint the same evening. I am SO glad I decided to have a hotel night in Kalispell. Even without the deer incident, that would not be a safe drive in the dark. There was NO cell phone service along much of the way, but plenty of deer crossing warning signs.


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Primarily, I took US 2 west. The area is beautiful. There are numerous pristine lakes with beautiful blue water. I stopped at two of them along the way.

The first lake I stopped at was called MacGregor Lake. It was pretty large. A woman chatted with me a bit. She saw the camera and talked about how I could develop the film and get it put on a disk at a store. She had no idea this was a digital camera. I explained that Nikon, for example, is not even making film cameras anymore. She had no idea about the latest technology. She was very nice and friendly. She talked about some of the small towns along the way and some of the nice lakes. She mentioned a Horseshoe Lake which is shaped like a horseshoe. It was her favorite lake in the area. I never found that on my way. She concluded by saying "Watch out for the deer!" I told her I already had a run in.

I later visited Loon Lake, which was also on the way. It too was absolutely beautiful.

More often than not, the mountains in the area were covered in trees. But sometimes, there were a lot of "bald" spots. There were some different types of wild flowers along the way compared to what we have in the east.

I took some photos along the Kootenai River. There is a railroad track which runs parallel to the road and the river. A train started moving. I continued taking photos. Much of the train was past me. I got in the car and started going at 70 (the speed limit). I actually overtook the train and left it in the dust. I was really kind of surprised, expecting the train would be doing at least 70.

Huckleberries seem to be very popular in this area and throughout the west all the way to the coast. I saw many cars parked along the road with people selling huckleberries. Until I visited Washington state, I never had a huckleberry.

Along the way, I passed through a small city called Troy. Those from my area are familiar with that name. The welcome sign for Troy, MT announced it's "Home of the Trojans." Hmm, very "creative" name for their local sports team.

After crossing into Idaho, I noticed that the trees started to change a bit. There were many very tall trees with no branches for a long way. The tops had a few very short branches. This wasn't the case for all of the trees, but many were like this.

There were more beautiful scenes along the Kootenai River but no place to stop and take photos. The speed limit dropped from 70 (Montana speed) to 60 on rural routes in Idaho.

After getting into the hotel, I noticed the clock said 8:30. I was a bit surprised because I knew it was 9:30. I contacted the hotel front desk and asked if we were still in Mountain Time. She informed me that we were in Pacific Time. There were no signs to indicate this along my path. (There were no signs when I went from Arizona to Nevada last year on my Southwest trip.) When entering any other time zone, whether from a rural route or an interstate, there is a sign indicating the new time zone. In any event, this was a welcome surprise because I could use the extra hour. I later learned that northern Idaho is in Pacific Time and southern Idaho is in Mountain Time.