Click on the map above for a full-size image.
This last weekend, I got out of Portland with Kim, Spencer and Jaime as we headed off to Spokane, WA and Missoula, MT to see the last two shows on Colin Lake and Wellbottom's 2008 Spring Tour. Colin is a good friend of ours (and I've designed his logo, web site and latest album cover as well) and Kim's boyfriend Kevin plays bass for the band. So it seemed like a great idea to pile in the car and cheer them along the home stretch. Christine couldn't make it on the trip with us as she has to work weekends and we kinda need the cashola at the moment, but she certainly didn't begrudge me going off and having fun.
We headed off after lunch on Friday, out along the stunning Columbia River Gorge towards Umatilla, where we entered Washington State and headed up to Spokane, a 350 mile journey in total. The weather was beautiful, the first 70°F (21°C) day since last October, with hardly a cloud in the sky. The familiar verdant green and waterfalls of the western Gorge soon gave way to the very different – but no less beautiful – desert-like eastern part and plains of Eastern Oregon. Much of the area is kept alive and productive by extensive irrigation; an aerial photograph of the area near Umatilla shows all the circular fields that seem to be the norm for irrigated farmlands in this part of the country.
We finally rolled into Spokane (pronounced "Spo-can" for all the non-locals) at around 7:00pm, where we met up with band and headed up to the house of one of Kim's friends to freshen up and have a few drinks before the show. The gig was at a small bar called "The Swamp" in a semi-industrial area of town, but attracted a pretty decent crowd, all of whom seemed to appreciate the show that the guys put on. Touring for a few weeks has definitely helped the band sound really tight, the show was pretty flawless. Here's a couple of photos:
After the show ended, we headed back up the hill to the house, where the party continued until 3:00am or so, after which everyone crashed where they could. The start the next morning was slow to say the least, with no-one even stirring before 11:30am. We finally got out of the house for a late breakfast at 1:00pm at a great cafe before everyone hit the road for the next leg to Missoula, Montana – a mere 200 miles away.
This leg of the journey took us across the "panhandle" of Idaho, a narrow strip of mountainous land that extends all the way north to the Canadian border. Looking at it on a map makes you wonder why a state would bother to claim such a narrow strip of land - and it actually all comes down to a mistake. The original surveyors were meant to mark the edge of the territory along the US Continental Divide, but went the wrong way and were almost at the Canadian border before they realised their mistake. The border should have been much further to the east, but the mistake has remained. After a mere 80 miles or so, we crossed the border into Montana, the "Big Sky State", the 10th US State that I have visited.
The scenery from Coeur d'Alene in Idaho all the way to Missoula was quite spectacular, with huge snow-covered mountains and pristine lakes. We also passed the town of Wallace, which holds quite a few claims to fame. It rose to prominence as the biggest silver mining town in the US, then had the last set of traffic lights on the US Interstate system: these were removed in 1991 when the bypass around (and above) the town was completed. Finally, in need of some tourism to help the struggling town, Wallace decided to declare itself "The Center Of The Universe", with a manhole cover downtown (seriously!) denoting the exact spot. I think that Rome and Greece had that idea some 2000 years earlier, guys...
We arrived in Missoula at around 7:00pm and got ourselves something to eat before heading off to the Top Hat Club, the venue for the last show of the tour.
Note the "$5 Tap Beer" sign... I'll be talking about that in another blog soon. While fairly unprepossessing from the outside, the Top Hat was a very atmospheric bar on the inside, and had a great big stage for the guys to perform on. Another great show, and a lot of the college kids in the audience got up and danced, which was fun to see. We were way too cool to dance ourselves.
The show finished right at closing time (2:00am) and we were treated to the Missoulan way of closing a bar: the chairs and tables were all instantly stacked on top of each other while the bartenders shouted things like, "If you don't work here, GET OUT!" and, "What are you still DOING HERE?!". We helped the guys load their gear into their rig, then headed off to a nearby hotel where we got half-price rooms for the night. Some of us headed off to a nearby 24-hour diner, but I took the opportunity to get an hour's headstart on sleep.
Sunday was the whole 550 mile trip in reverse, which took pretty much the whole day. We were all pretty tired and glad to be home, but felt for the band: in their big and slow rig, they didn't get back to Portland until late in the night, well and truly tired of this whole touring thing. Kevin had to get up and go to work first thing Monday morning as well, ugghh!!
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April 15, 2008
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