September 10th was our first full day of travel, but even though we had at least 225 miles to travel, we back-tracked first for an interesting and unexpected visit.

The owner of the place where participants could park their tow vehicles and trailers if they towed their Model A’s to the tour invited us to visit him.

The first photo above (taken by Tim) shows most of our cars gathered at the “Eiffel Tower” in Plain, Washington. The owner had a car collection and an amazing metal shop, and he had actually built this replica himself. The next photos are just two of several of his statues –I think I got a photo of Winston Churchill and Lady Liberty.

Next we were on our way back to where we started in Leavenworth and ready to start our trek toward Coeur d’Alena, Idaho. We had two important tasks to accomplish in Spokane before we left the state:

First, we had to show Terri the big sister to her car “Radio Flyer”.

Can you see the big Radio Flyer in the background? It’s actually a large slide, with kids (and adults) sliding down the wagon’s handle!

Next, Jay met one of his Air Force buddies from probably 1963-64, Ken Vaughn who lives nearby:

This is the first time the two have been reunited in person, and Ken was happy to add his signature to the approximate 1,000 veteran signatures already on Maxi. Several of this old Air Force gang plan to meet somewhere to enjoy a joint 80th birthday party in the coming 12 months.

We then proceeded to take the scenic route to Coeur d’Alene, which took a while and we failed to get photos along the way, and we arrived into town late.

We were looking forward to a better photo day on September 11th when we planned to move from Coeur d’Alene to Kalispell, Montana — approximately 230 miles, again taking the scenic route. However, Maxi had a different idea:

The guys finally got her running, and we did make the drive, but rather late. We saw glimpses of beautiful forrest and lakes, but no time to stop for photos! Argh!

Tomorrow is another long day and we plan to cross the border and enter Canada. We promise to make time to take photos tomorrow! See you there.