28th April 2015 – Coeur D’Alene to Seattle

Today is another lovely sunny but cool day as we drive out of town onto the motorway towards Seattle about 320 miles away. We have only been on the motorway for about 15 minutes and RIP pulls off into a weigh station and leads us into the carpark, where there are 2 MGA’s, 4 MGB’s and an MGC waiting to greet us. They are from the MG Spokane Inland Empire Classics Club and the Northwest British Classics Club and they are all so very friendly and present us with one of their clubs grille badges. Dave was keeping this meeting a surprise for us all, it’s just lovely how fellow MG people are so enthusiastic about our trip and our visit to their town to meet them. They drive about 30 miles with us along the motorway before they peel off and go home. We drive through open undulating farm countryside to Banks Lake for our money coffee stop.Unfortunately red car gets a flat tyre as we cross the bridge to the cafe and has to stop & change it, which is done in a flash, good effort seeing how all the luggage has to come out of the back to get to the spare.We continue on a great MG driving road past Dry Falls, along side Blue Lake, Lenore Lake and Soap Lake which is just beautiful. The day has warmed up and it’s lovely and sunny, there are people out on the lake in boats and campers along the banks. As we cross Wanapum Lake at Vantage we can see all these MG’s in a car park and a large Union Jack flag being waved, what a fabulous reception from local and Seattle MG drivers. We spend some time chatting and making new friends before we go in a convoy up to a wind farm. From here we go to Ellensburg and have lunch in a diner that is full of automobile memorabilia, even a petrol pump. As we drive into Seattle on a beautiful tree lined 3 lane motorway the temperature drops, the clouds close in and it starts to rain, so it’s back to winter and we put the heater back on!