We continued North on Monday, August 20, excited to get our first experience in Coeur D’Alene, a small city in northern Idaho well-known for it’s beautiful lake, mountains, and mellow lifestyle.  But as we drove north on Route 95, it was clear that the smoke from the wildfires had other plans.  We arrived in CDA quite literally in a fog, and even simple things like getting our bearings, were hard to do.  We regrouped at a local Starbucks using all our fancy gadgets, and we decided that we needed to forge north in search of better air.  We arrived in Sandpoint about an hour later.  Sandpoint is a smaller version of CDA, we think, except that it has a local ski hill called “Schweitzer”.  We grabbed a site at Riley Creek Recreation Area, a park operated by the Corps of Engineers and rated highly on Campendium.  Riley Creek is located on Pend Oreille Lake (pronounced “Ponderay”) which is French for “hang by the ears”, a testament to the area’s history with trapping.  And although the air quality wasn’t perfect, it was certainly better than down south. We bummed around downtown Sandpoint and even managed to find a couple breweries, MickDuff’s and Laughing Dog, to enjoy a few brews.  I baked my first bread at this location…a small 2-cup artisan loaf with fresh rosemary and garlic.  Miss Carmen, the oven worked fine at 430 degrees and the bread was delicious with only a dab of olive oil.  Check!  We did a short 4-mile mountain bike ride in the small town of Dover in the middle of nowhere.  Most of the trails were plotted on MTB Project, but there were newer spurs that were actively being added.  And although most of the trails were short, some of them were very steep and certainly enough to get the lungs full of smoke and the legs burning.  We especially enjoyed the downhill trail back to the van on “Sherwood Forest”…tons of berms, boulders, and roots to make things challenging.  Whoever is working on this trail system ought to be applauded…we didn’t see a soul out there in the middle of nowhere, but we do know that the trails are heavily used and apparently very much up-kept by the locals (thank you for your hard work).   We rode up to Schweitzer in the van to check out the vibe.  Cool base area with lots of new development and potential.  We will need to ski there on the way back through next winter.  Bottom line…Sandpoint is cool and we will keep it in mind for our future travels and exploration.