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.

Glacier National Park, MT.

MacDonald Resort

This waterfall falls 429 feet

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Yesterday Tommy and I jumped on little red and rode through Glacier National Park. We had an idea of which part we wanted to visit but were leery because we were told ‘the road to the sun’ was under construction. We  decided to try it anyway.

The odd thing about this  National Park, is that I had never thought about visiting it until several people in Butte told us how beautiful it is. It borders Canada. The weather is a blistering 70-71 degrees, LOL, and sunny all day.

The first place we come upon was MacDonald Resort. It sits on MacDonald Lake and is  very seasoned. It’s old but nice. It’s rustic but comfortable. They offer boat rentals and boat tours. They also have a rock beach, with flowers on it. Yes, flower planters on the beach.

The Weeping Wall

From there we headed up ‘the road to the sun’.  It starts out paved but quickly turns to dirt. You follow a line of cars all heading to the same place, Logan’s Pass. It’s frustrating because as beautiful as it is - there are pull offs for pictures and admiration- yet people randomly stop when ever they feel it necessary. We, being on a bike. makes it very dangerous. After about the 5th person doing this to us I pulled  out my NY attitude, got off the bike, and walked up the driver’s window. Man, did I tell him how I felt! Not that it did any good because we just ended up behind someone else who suddenly stopped when ever they wanted to too. But I felt better! Tommy was not happy with me. What a surprise!

Momma Goat and Baby

so close, I could have petted her. This is not zoomed in.

On the way back from Logan’s pass we encountered sheep.  Yes, finally, big horn sheep. All last year I would call out - here sheepy, sheepy, and we never saw one. Yesterday, we saw 11. One so close to me, if I choose to, I could have petted her. She was adorable and friendly and not afraid of people. We followed her across the street to a herd of them eating dinner. It was fabulous.

Just after the sheep, we saw mountain goats. The poppa goat stayed higher than the momma goat and the baby goat, but was constantly looking back down the mountain to see where they were. We were astonished as to just how sure footed they truly are.

It was an amazing day. The scenery is indescribable, the weather perfect, and the animals and natural waterfalls exceptional.

Today we took little red out again. Yesterday we drove 80 miles. Today it was just over 90 miles. We drove in the park in the opposite direction today. Towards Bowman Lake. We had to leave the park and take an outside road along the park edge because of flooding inside the park. After and hour and a ½ of driving on a dirt road (like a washboard), we finally got back into the park. After passing the guard at the park entrance, we had only 6 more miles to the lake. Yay!  NOT!! 6 miles took us 55 minutes. You cannot go above 15 mph because the road is equivalent to Costa Rican roads. They are not really roads…just holes with some dirt and rocks around them.  Twists and turns, uphill and downhill, with no warnings. Crazy, crazy roads.

Read the bottom line

Bowman Lake itself was nice, but not as nice as MacDonald Lake we visited yesterday.

this is the road with the bears

Bowman Lake

Huckleberry Pie

The fun began on our way back! We stopped at the one and only place that had cabins to rent and an old log cabin that was converted into a bar/restaurant. It was cute and seemed clean and there were a lot of cars there. I had a piece of huckleberry pie. For the past 3 days all we have heard about and seen on the side of the road was huckleberries. Huckleberry this and huckleberry that. Everywhere huckleberries. Tommy started telling me over and over again - ‘Ill be your huckleberry’! I HAD to find out what these huckleberries were all about. I ordered a piece of pie and put before me was what I thought - blueberry. I ate it. It was great. Baked to perfection. I love blueberries, but I wanted huckleberry! When I inquired about the difference between the 2 different berries I was informed that huckleberries grow in the wild and cannot be cultivated. They only grow this time of year and they only grow between 3 and 5 thousand feet of elevation. They are a bit tart compared to blueberries. Blueberries grow at sea level and can be cultivated. Huckleberries are 5 times the cost of blueberries and honestly. I tasted no difference. I did enjoy the pie but I’ll just stick with blueberries for fewer costs.

this is when i tried to take a picture of the bears

this is as we drove by the bears that wanted to eat us!

We started to head back to camp and knew we had to endure the horrible road we came in on and braced ourselves. Twenty minutes into it, after dodging hole after hole and Tommy completely concentrating on the obstacle course… I freak out. Now, picture this; Im on the back of the bike with my arms resting on my thighs. My hands slightly touching Tommy’s sides and the camera in my right hand.

OMG!!!! STOP!!! THERES A BEAR!!! TOMMY THERE’S A BEAR!!!! By now my left hand is beating the crap out of Tommy’s left ribcage. He is so concentrated on the holes and not spilling out that he wasn’t looking ahead more than 100 feet in front of him. OMG!!!! THERE’S A BEAR. A BLACK BEAR! A BLACK MOMMA BEAR AND HER 2 BABIES!!! IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD IN FRONT OF US!!!! STOP!!!! TURN AROUND!!! OOOOMMMMMMMGGGGGGG!!!!!

Now Tommy is freaked out because im screaming while punching the crap out of him….he slows down but doesn’t stop. He tells me, of all things, get out the camera! Yeah, right, that’s what I want to do….take freaking pictures! I wanted to turn around and go the other way. But no! Tommy keeps going.

The momma bear looked up at us and then back at her babies. Back at us and then started walking towards the other side of the road. Now, I'm like - Tommy, why aren’t we turning around? Are you crazy? He gets all pissy with me (I guess because I was still beating him), and tells me; ’what do you think she is going to do? Jump on the motorcycle?’ I don’t know, I say. But am scared shit! We lived and weren't eaten!

We passed by the spot that she crossed (at 15 mph so she could have jumped on me at any moment),and she stood there watching us. Starring at us. Wanting to eat us. I know it. You will see the picture I TRIED to take but all I got was blurry grass.

Tommy was still angry with me for a while after that. Im sure he’ll be angry with me again tomorrow when he wakes up with bruised ribs. The ironic thing about all this is - we have been talking about bears recently and I have come to the conclusion that black bears no longer scare me. They are, at best, 120 lbs, (the size of Sire), and are naturally scared of humans. You should be able to make them scat easily. Grizzly bears are a different story. They can be up to 700 lbs, 10 ft tall and can be aggressive. But I also came to the conclusion with the Grizzly where I know I am a good shot with a pistol. I decided I would not waste any time on shooting at the bear. I would simply shoot him in the head, he would fall down and die, and I would escape. Releasing all my inner fears of bears.

Today - none of that worked! We did have a great day and again the weather was perfect. Tommy really is a good sport for putting up with me and my silly inhibitions.

I know there are a lot of pictures in this blog, but I can’t decide which ones not to post. We took 326 in two days.

Tomorrow we leave MT and head to Idaho. They have fabulous trails for us to explore with the Polaris. From there we are off to Seattle, WA and then onto Oregon to see my Aunt Mary. I can’t wait! Thanks for reading.