* Trail of the Coeur D'Alenes * The Gondola * Getting Home through Spokane *

It is 350 miles from Enumclaw to Kellogg Idaho, home of TaterTOT. The ride begins in the dense maritime Pacific Northwest forest, climbs the Cascade Mountains, and crosses the most arid parts of of Washington, before entering the Bitterroot Mountains of northern Idaho.

This is typical landscape for the middle of the trip. You can see why we decided against holding TaterTOT here. This spot is between George, Washington and Ritzville.

In Spokane, we stopped at the Campbell House at the Museum of Arts and Culture.

Amasa Campbell bought a mine and built a mill in the Kellogg area in 1887. With his new fortune, he married and brought his new wife to Wallace. The raucous town was too wild and dangerous for high society, so the couple moved to Spokane and built their mansion.

In the beginning, they were transported by carriage, but after the turn of the century, they bought this Rauch and Lamb electric car. By 1900, 38% of the cars in the United States were electric. They were quiet, did not require arm-breaking cranking to start, and had a range great enough for the limited improved roads. Spokane had 1500 cars by 1913.

The bicycle was also an important means of transportation at the time. This is a 1896 safety bicycle, a significant improvement over the earlier high wheelers that were noted for pitching the rider over the handlebars to a crashing face plant and concussion. (Today, there are about a billion bicycles in the world, about twice the number of cars. In 1972, bicycles began outselling cars in the United States again.)