Wallace, ID

Friday, August 12, 2011

This is a mish mosh of what we have done here this past week in Wallace, ID. We come to rest here after leaving Glacier National Park and intended on staying 2 nights. We are were having difficulty finding an RV park in Seattle so we choose to stay in Wallace a bit longer. Seattle seems to be booked as almost every RV park. The ones we can get in, Sire isn’t welcome.

can you imagine? 2 1/2 yrs on meth!

So far almost  every town we visit has history. This is the history of Wallace.

It was settled in 1890 with prospectors in search of silver and gold. In August of 1910 they had violent, out of control, forest fires. Hurricane like winds came in from the North and it expanded the fire over 3 million acres wide. One of the heroes during this fire was Edward Pulaski. He was the resident forest ranger. While he and 45 of his men were fighting the fire they became trapped by the flames. Fire habitually climbs up, but ½ way down the mountain the winds changed  directions which made Pulaski and his men retreat. The smoke was copious, the heat intense, and the lucidity of air extremely poor. Pulaski led his crew back up the mountain to an abandoned mine.

Once inside the mine - after he saturated his shirt and jacket from the creek - he stood in the entryway and held it up to impede the smoke from coming in. This worked for a while but not for long. Ultimately all the men lost consciousness and became overcome with the smoke. Several hours later when Pulaski woke up he started to wake up the others. They resisted him. They wanted to sleep. (An consequence from smoke inhalation). Pulaski started to kick everyone of them until they opened their eyes. All but 6 did.

After they were conscious for a while they tried to summon up strength to head down the mountain on another route. Most men couldn’t stand, they were so feeble. Pulaski crawled his way out of the mine to the stream, and again soaked his shirt with water but not wringing it this time. When he returned he had all the surviving men literally suck the water out of the shirt. By doing this they regained enough strength to attempt down the mountain.

Half way down, on the other side of the fire, the women from the town met their men with whiskey and coffee. To their surprise they were all refused. The men simply wanted water.

Pulaski spent 2 months in the hospital and received several severe burns but if it were not for his courage and quick thinking, they all may have perished.

this was lunch!

redneck ammo

The trail we took was the exact of Pulaski and his men retreating up to the mine. It is winding and turns a lot and is very tapered at points. Within 2 miles we climbed 800 feet. Once we arrived at the mine we realized it was across the stream. It did not stop Tommy from exploring. Sire, of course followed, and then I. It was a great hike.

Downtown Wallace there is a club/restaurant called The 1313 Club. It was recommended to us for dinner. It got its name from one of two different stories. You have to choose which one to believe.

The 1st being the owner deemed 13 a lucky number and decided that 2x’s 13 would be double the luck. The second goes like this. There were 12 saloons and 12 brothels at the time the club opened and when it came time to register a name it was the 13th bar /saloon and would eventually turn into the 13th brothel. Both stories are told by locals and which ever one they choose to believe, they desperately want you to believe also. (The food was mediocre).
 

Ya Think?

We also visited the court house in order to purchase a license plate for our Polaris. This was needed to make it street legal. Once we entered in the court house I expected security. NOPE!!! Just a beautiful, well maintained, ornate, marbled floor, old style court house. The only thing that was alarming was the posters of people on methamphetamine. It is huge problem out here and apparently it only takes a year to make you lose your teeth, hair and age 25 yrs. Absolutely gross! Oh, and there was an inmate being taken back to jail from court, which was across the street. That’s a great way to save taxpayers on transportation, huh?

I need everyone to save me their bottle caps.

The second or third day there we took the Polaris on the Hiawatha trail. It led us to a small, small town called Avery. Population 37. The trail was closed 3 miles from us reaching the town because of blasting. We backtracked and rode an off vehicle trail along the river. It was very pretty. We went through 6 tunnels and several old iron bridges. This path was an old railway that no longer is in use. Avery had very little to offer but pork grinds. Gross. It was a good day though. We were on the trail over 4 hours.

Murray was another little town we took a ride to one day. The population there was an enormous, 99. We had fun there. We stopped for lunch at the local saloon. The only thing in town. The town consisted of the post office (the size of a large shed), a saloon, and a museum. The museum was full of donated pieces of every and anything you could think of from the past locals. It was put together extremely well.  We spent several hours between the saloon and the museum. On the way back we found our very first Huckleberry bush! YAY!!!! I was very excited to finally see one.

Pulaski and another after the fire

Huckleberry bush

Today is Saturday and we are now driving to Seattle WA. We will stop half way there in a place called Easton for the night and continue on tomorrow. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful weekend.