The number of homeless female veterans is on the rise: in 2006, there were 150 homeless female veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; in 2011, there were 1,700. That same year, 18% of homeless veterans assisted by the VA were women.
Re: Best dramatic drive from Spokane to Salt Lake City. I have driven between Spokane and Salt Lake City and the drive is a beautiful mountain drive through the panhandle of Idaho and Montana. Huge forests of Pine. Nothing scenic to speak of though once you hit I15. We visited a working silver mine in Wallace, Idaho and a few ghost towns in Montana.
With a population of just over 300 in 1880, Spokane had grown in leaps and bounds to over 100,000 people by 1909, making the city, at the time, larger than Salt Lake City and the largest city west of Minneapolis.