He Said:We've been earning hotel points on the trip and I found a quality in in Liberty Lake so cheap we had enough for a free night. I was a little bit worried about it, given the fact that it was so much cheaper and still available, but it turned out to be quite nice. In a bit of an industrial park but the room was huge. I earned some Dad points by hauling the second queen bed mattress out of the bedroom and putting it on the floor in the living room next to the sofa bed, so they could all sleep together. It had nothing to do with me wanting a kid-free room at all.
In the morning the rest of the clan went to the pool (after meeting a family from Calgary who'd plowed down in a day) while I packed up. Then we hit the road. On the way to Missoula traffic came to a dead stop due to an accident. I looked it up later; apparently a pick-up blew a tire and flipped, and they had a kid sleeping in the bed; which is pretty horrible. No deaths at the time I read it but it didn't sound good.
We stopped at a Carousel for Missoula which is kind of cool. We've been there before. Fancy carousel, if the kids reach out and grab a brass ring out of the dragon's mouth they get a free ride. G's getting a bit old for those places and it was a roaster. Did our usual Barnes & Noble stop and on the road again to Liberty Lake. oh, also our first McDonald's stop of the trip. We try not to do chains, but the accident slowed us down, I wanted to keep driving, and they had a sandwich we don't have back home, so we justified it.
After checking in to the hotel we found a park/beach down the road and thought we'd try it. Turned out to be the best choice. Kids got changed into their suits and we were out in the water from 8 until 9, I think. Beautiful night.
She Said:At first when you see an accident has happened your selfish side comes out and says "ugh, I hope it's not too bad and keeps us here all day". Then the creative side comes out and starts trying to figure out if there's a way around "what if we drove the wrong way down the highway in the shoulder to that last overpass....?" Then you see the helicopter and 2 ambulances and 3 firetrucks and the sadistic side pipes up and says "oooh, serious, I wonder if we'll see any body parts and blood on the road." Then you see the wreckage and your empathy kicks in and you think "oh wow, I hope nobody was killed." As you drive away you start feeling lucky it wasn't you and you imagine how it might have happened and how you could avoid having the same thing happen to you. And finally when you hear on the news that the helicoptered lady wasn't wearing a seat belt and the 10 year old was sleeping in the cab of the truck (please refer to Day 12 re:stupid people)and you feel relieved that it couldn't possibly happen to you because you would never do that. The cause of the accident was a blown tire though, which is hopefully less likely to happen to us with our hi-tech Odyssey wheel pressure monitoring feature.