Sept. 30, 2013

Sept. 30, 2013

Happy Birthday, Cam!  Today is our grandson's 17th birthday, and he lives in McLean, VA.
It's Monday, and still raining.  We have had rain in Osburn, Idaho since we got here last Friday, and the weather news was forecasting high winds and heavy rain through today.  We have decided to stay where we are, with a heavy snow warning east of us, and heavy rains west of us.  I'm just glad we are past the snow areas!  With nothing to report over the weekend, except that the Badgers lost to Ohio State and the Seahawks are 4-0.  It was a football weekend, and we had nothing interesting to report!  We decided to go back to Wallace this afternoon, as there seemed to be a let up in the rain.  We went through the beautiful old railroad museum, and that was the picture I posted from Friday.  It was finished in 1902 and closed in 1980.  We didn't care to go through the mining museum, as we have done that in Bisbee, AZ, so we did a little geo-caching and walked the main part of the town, until the rain halted that plan.  We saw the Wallace Bordello Museum, which was open from 1895 to 1988!  Yes, 1988, and they say the appearance of the things remaining, indicated a rapid exit! We didn't tour that museum. 
Wallace is nestled in the valley, surrounded by a lot of mountains, on just a sliver of land. After 1900, Wallace became the hub of one of the world's richest mining districts.  By 2011 it had produced 1.3 billion ounces of silver.  They are still mining silver, lead, and zinc ores.
Lana Turner was born in Wallace, and her family later moved to California, where she was discovered by Hollywood, and made famous. 
We will check our next destination, which is Coulee City, WA to make sure they have power and they don't have any downed trees.  We understand the Seattle area had problems, but we think we'll be fine. 

Tour Guide at the Railroad Museum

The back side of the Wallace Bordello Museum

'Buns of Steel' Geo-cache

Sept. 27, 2013

We left Polson, MT this morning and had a short jaunt over to Osburn, Idaho and we're staying at the Blue Anchor RV Park.  It's small, but has large sites, and according to the weather, we might have to stay a few days.  The rains have entered the west coast of Washington, and they are predicting 5 to 10 inches in any given area along the western part of the state.  There are winds accompanying the rain, so I guess we'll stay put until Monday.  Driving our motor home down the road in those conditions, is like driving a billboard!  Imagine that!  We had an absolutely beautiful drive over, following three different rivers that were alongside the road most of the time.  We followed Flathead River out of Polson, then Clark Fork River, and that flowed into St. Regis River.  It was great scenery the whole way, as the mountains surrounded us from Polson to Osburn. Jim surprised me today, as he spotted an Osprey sitting on its nest on a railroad bridge.  How can he see that while keeping his eyes peeled on the road?  I wasn't camera ready, so it will be a 'memory photo'!  You can tell that we are close to British Columbia, as the terrain here reminds us of that province in Canada.  Once we got settled in, and had lunch, we struck off to claim our Idaho Souvenir in geo-caching.  We had to go to a nearby cemetery to find it.  The weather was supposed to be sunny for the most part of the day, but it started to sprinkle, but we still headed off to Wallace.  Wallace is a very old mining and historic town, with many of the old ornate buildings still standing.  We would have loved to walk around town a bit, but the rain didn't permit us to do that.  We are thinking that we will extend our stay here until at least Monday, and hope the weather breaks by then.  We are so lucky to have built that flexibility into our trip.  I doubt if there will be anything exciting to write about in that duration.  I might even have to dig out the sewing machine, if it continues to rain. 

Scene from the area of Clark Fork River

Museum in Wallace, Idaho

Main Street Wallace....yes, that is the interstate at the end of the block!

Sept. 26, 2013

Sept. 26, 2013

We finally had sunshine today, after several rainy days, so we are so thankful that we decided to stay a week here.  It wasn't a hardship, as we really love this area, and we have been able to keep busy with the geo-caching and sight-seeing, that there is to do.  We did both today.  We again, found some very ingenious caches and these people really have clever minds!  We couldn't find three today!  I think that's a record in one day for us!  We're either wearing down or losing our grip on this caching stuff!  I guess we'll have something to come back here for.
Our main goal was to go to Ninepipes Museum south of Ronan, MT.  It was fabulous, and we are so glad that we allowed time to do it.  I have never seen such an extensive display of Native American artifacts on display anywhere.  The gorgeous clothing, with all the intricate beading that was done on them, were in excellent condition.  The baby carriers, again, were painstakingly beaded and they even had the little beads hanging down so it caught the baby's eye to entertain them.  They had many pictures depicting friendly times between the white man and the Indian, and there were many marriages between the two cultures, which surprised me.  It ceases to amaze me, as we travel the country to become aware of the Native Americans, their way of life, and their struggles, and to reflect on things I'm learning about them.  It appears that the Indians in this area were friendly, as opposed to the the ones in AZ that were more combative, especially, the Apaches. According to the person at the museum, there is presently, a disagreement over the water rights here, so there always seems to be some things that need to be ironed out. 
We ended the day with a beer at the Glacier Brewery, as they had a geo-cache there, also, and we had dinner at the Mexican restaurant.  We are ready to move on. We have thoroughly enjoyed Polson.   Idaho, here we come. 

Historic Dupruis Barn

Huge old home of days gone by

Indian baby carrier

Sept. 25, 2013

Sept. 25, 2013

We had our predicted rainy morning, so I thought it was a good time to do laundry, so we can get out in the sunshine tomorrow.  People in our park are getting a little nervous, because there is talk of snow in the mountains, but we aren't worried about it.  We are west of the Continental Divide and the valley is going to get rain, but the mountains east of us, will get snow.  I did see where Glacier National Park closed Logan's Pass today, due to the snow amounts.  They also closed St. Mary's campground to tent campers, due to the increased bear activity in that area.  We hiked there last week!  Being that today was a quiet day, I will show you some of the geo-caches that we have found on our trip.  These people are very clever with their hides, and it is sometimes difficult to find the cache.  The caches each have their own title and sometimes, it's a clue to where it is.  We enjoy geo-caching, because it takes us to some very interesting places, where we travel.
Tomorrow we hope to get out and do the things that we waited for a nice day for, and then we leave for Idaho on Friday. 

This was at a Case Dealership and the name of the cache was 'Get Off my Case'.  It is the bottom round container, that had a magnet on it and the log we signed, was inside.

We didn't sign this one!  Can you see why?  It was loaded with wasps.  It's a fake electrical box.

This person, took the insides out of a padlock and placed a plastic tube with the log inside.

A piece of bark was glued to the plastic container protecting the log from the elements. It was then placed in the tree, in a cozy spot.

This stick was about 15" long and a hole was drilled in the end to hold the plastic container.  It was then placed in the crotch of a tree that had many sticks in it.

The plastic container was placed in a drilled hole in this stick in the 'burl' and placed amongst many other sticks in the crotch of a clump of trees.

 

Sept. 24, 2013

Sept. 24, 2013

Today started out very dreary and rainy, as they predicted, so we didn’t move too quickly this morning.  We ate lunch and I had to check out the quilt shop in town, and was very impressed with their selections, and supplies.  It even had yarn, so it was a pretty complete shop.  Even more reason for me to feel like I could live here!  While we were there, we asked to see a phone book to get ‘Marv’s’ phone number.  Marv is the fellow that our friend, Sam, from Waunakee wanted us to contact while we were in the area.  We called him and he said he would be home at 3:00, if we wanted to come out.  Well, our dreary day turned into a very pleasant and enriching day!  It even seemed to get brighter after we left Marv.  He has a Christmas tree farm and lives on a hill overlooking the beautiful little town of Polson and its lake below.  While we were visiting with Marv, his brother-in-law, Doug had arrived for the evening.  So we got to meet Marv and Doug, and we had such a wonderful visit with them both.  They are leaving for California tomorrow, for Marv’s grandson’s wedding.  So it was lucky for us, that we called Marv today, as he would have been gone tomorrow.  We have a feeling that we will see them both again sometime, and hopefully, meet Doug’s wife next time.   It turned out to be a great day!

Marv Kaschke

Doug, Marlene, Marv, and Jim

 

 

Sept. 23, 2013

As we all know, Sunday was not a good day for Green Bay.  We spent most of the day watching football, and saw the terrible loss for our Packers!
Monday was a great day.  The sun was partially out but the heavy clouds hung in the mountains.  It's funny how those mountains can make their own weather.  There was rain turning to snow on the tops of the mountains that frame this beautiful valley that we are in.  We headed down to the National Bison Range and drove the 19 miles through it, seeing most of the wild animals that were in there.  The two herds of bison that we saw were pretty far away, but we did see several of the 'lone males' here and there.  There were plenty of Pronghorn Antelope and deer, and we were lucky enough to see a bull Elk rounding up his harem.  We sat for over an hour watching them, and another bull Elk tried to come into the fold, but he was quickly escorted out!  Jim got a very good shot of what we think is a Ptarmigan, so this is something for the grandchildren to research and let us know if we're correct! It could be a Grouse of some kind, but we don't think so.  We also saw two cowboys on horses, just outside the bison range,  with about three dogs rounding up a herd of cattle.  That's my true image of what the west is like.  Oh, I thought, 'how much fun is that', but I'm sure it's work for them. 
We did some geo-caching on our way home, and also stopped at two churches that are on the National Register of Historic Places.  The first was a small wood frame mission church that served the area homesteaders, who were predominately Irish, and was built in the early 1900's, and the second was built in 1891.  The latter church, St. Ignatius is believed to be the third most beautiful church in the world.  That is debatable for me, as we have seen many beautiful churches in Europe and the United States that, we felt were outstanding.  The interesting thing about St. Ignatius is the fact, that the mission cook, Joseph Carignano, painted all the murals in the church.
The rains started moving in as we got closer to Polson, so we found the little brew pub, Glacier Brewing and enjoyed a beer and some chit chat with the customers, and our server.

Ptarmigan

Pronghorn Antelope

Bull Elk and his harem

St. Joseph's Catholic Church of D'Aste

St. Ignatius Catholic Church

 

Sept. 21, 2013

Sept 21, 2013
Today is the day to do the flowers.  I have been saving my favorite flower pictures until the day came that we didn't do much.   It was a football day, and we couldn't get the Badgers, but we see they won.  We're hoping the rains hold off for us on Monday, so we can do some outdoor things, but if not, we'll take in some of the museums in the area.  We are so impressed with this area.  I think I could live here.  We did a little geo-caching this afternoon, and ran into a salty old fisherman on the pier. He moved here from Grand Rapids, MI ten years ago.  He said the lake rarely freezes over completely  during the winter, and it has only been zero or below about 10 times in the last ten years.  He also said they don't get that much snow to shovel, either.  He is also a very good friend of the man, that a friend of ours in Waunakee wants us to meet.  Odd how these things happen.   It is truly, a picturesque area, with the small towns hugging Lake Flathead and the mountains beyond.  I haven't discovered a quilt shop yet, but we'll search it out.  

Foxgloves in Apgar MT

Windowbox at McDonald Hotel GNP

Hotel McDonald GNP

Many Glaciers Hotel GNP

Street baskets in Polson MT

 

Sept. 20, 2013

We left St. Mary's on the east side of Glacier National Park this morning, thinking we did enough here, but we know we'll be back.  It's such a beautiful area and the hiking is wonderful there.  My view of the drive from St. Mary's to Polson, MT was absolutely beautiful!  It went from the mountains at Glacier, skirting around the southern part of Glacier, seeing large ranches, over the Continental Divide, and then we followed Flathead River that flowed into Flathead Lake into Polson.  Jim's view was, he had to keep his eyes on the road!  We arrived at Eagle's Nest Resort and decided to stay a week here.  We checked the weather for the next week and we had sunshine today and they predict it to shine again next week Thursday!  We're making good time for our arrival at Leavenworth WA for Oktoberfest the first weekend in October, so we'll stay here a bit longer.  We got settled in and struck off for the Kerr Dam, which came highly recommended to us by our friend, Sam Robinson.  He didn't tell us that it has 352 steps DOWN to the dam, and of course, 352 back UP!  We did it, and we also found a cache down there.  The view of the dam and the surrounding area is very nice.  We are very glad we got to see it in the sunshine! Polson looks like a busy little town with lots of things to do in the area.  We'll be glad to stay in one place for a while.

Our home for this week.

Kerr Dam at Polson MT

Flathead River

Sept. 19, 2013

We didn't do anything interesting yesterday, so no blog.  We did check out the visitor center but that left us disappointed.  I guess we expected more.  It had rained a lot the night before and it was still drizzling, so we decided to just hole up for the day.  Today proved to be well worth the wait.  We could see the new layer of snow on top of the mountains, and it was so fresh and crisp outside.  We had donned our new can of bear spray, as we were doubting the one we had.  This is no time to be doubtful!  It's $50.00 worth of insurance!  We hiked back to St. Mary's Falls and then to Virginia Falls and they were both wonderful.  There were quite a few people on this trail, so we felt pretty good about being out.  We wanted to hike to Baring Falls, and do a Virtual Cache back there, and once we hit that trail, we were alone!  It was a two mile round trip, and we kept very aware of any sounds or movement along the trail.  It was actually, pretty peaceful. Our total mileage of hiking today was about 5 miles.  The trails again, were well groomed and very nice.  We decided to go back to Many Glaciers as it was early in the afternoon, and we got our reward for doing so.  We wanted to see the St. Mary's Hotel on the inside, which we didn't do the first time we went over there.  It's very rustic with hand hewn logs and a lot of character!  It was still flourishing with activity, but that will come to an end, as they close this coming weekend.  We feel fortunate to have been able to spend some time here before the season ends.  We have only done a tiny fraction of hiking that is available here.  They have about 700 miles of hiking and we know we'll return to GNP to enjoy this beautiful place again. As we left Many Glaciers, we saw a mom Grizzly with three cubs and a lone Grizzly a little farther away.  We leave here feeling satisfied, but yearning for more......some day!

At St. Mary's Falls

Virginia Falls

Fresh snow on the mountains

 

Inside St. Mary's Hotel

Bellboys ready for Oktoberfest!

Sept. 17, 2013

Sept. 17, 2013
Today was another wonderful day in GNP, and the weather didn't let us down.  They had predicted rain this afternoon, but it didn't materialize.  We went to the northern section of GNP to Many Glaciers, and it is much quieter with less people, and more wildlife.  As we approached the hotel area, we knew there was something worth stopping for, with all the cars parked alongside the road.  They had sighted a bear on the side of the mountain and everyone thought it was a Grizzly.  We moved a short distance from there, and we stopped again to see a mother black bear and two cubs.  We proceeded about a half mile and parked our vehicle to hike the Grinnell Lake and Glacier Trail.  We are in bear country, but it didn't seem to worry us any.  Jim carries bear spray, but we just aren't fearing the bears enough not to hike.  The trails aren't as populated as they are on the Road to the Sun trails, but we liked this one better, as it was not the boardwalks that we hiked yesterday, rather it was  just a well traveled earth trail with lots of thickets!  It was a 5.6 mile round trip hike back to the Grinnell Lake and Glacier and it was beautiful.  We had a footbridge to cross, which was fun to try to balance on that, and they had a nice falls area to view.  We met several other very friendly people on the trail, so it wasn't that we were out there alone.  We sighted seven Mountain Goats today but they were pretty far away for a decent picture, and we understand there are moose in this area, but we didn't see any.  Tomorrow is supposed to be a rainy day, so we'll go to the visitor center and soak up all that information, plus "things we should know before we hike in GP".  If it looks nice, we'll hit another trail. We did stop at Two Sisters Cafe coming out of Babb, MT, on the recommendation of Jeanie and Nick and Tom and Karen, our hiking friends in AZ.  They said the pie was SO good.  We decided to eat there, and we were so full that we couldn't eat pie, so we brought ours home!  That works for me.

Black Bear and two cubs

Dock on our trail to Grinnell Lake

View across the lake of Many Glaciers Hotel

Grinnell Lake and Glacier

View from our hiking trail

Sept. 16, 2013

This morning started out very overcast and it looked like it would rain at any minute.  We thought, for sure we would have to spend the day in the visitor center, watching movies of the area.  We're saving that for a rainy day.  By 8:30 a.m. the sun came out and we headed for Glacier National Park.  The heavy clouds, and slight drizzle seemed to put a whole new look on the park, and we were seeing it in a much different way, than we thought we would.  By the time we got to Logan Pass, it was threatening rain, so we quickly took our pictures of seven Great Horned Sheep resting on the mountainside, and continued on the Road to the Sun.  As we started down on the other side of Logan Pass, a big rainbow flashed over the mountain and down into the valley.  It was all about timing today. Just around the next bend and down a ways, we spotted two Mountain Goats grazing, way up on the mountainside.   We drove to the end and took our pictures of the lake at Apgar Village, and started back toward St. Mary's.  We stopped at McDonald Lodge and found it very charming, and colorful with all their beautiful flowers still blooming.  We walked down to the lake to do an Earth Cache and take more pictures of this mystic looking place, with the weather still setting the mood! This was one of our favorites stops for the day.  We saw a marmot at one of our stops, and it didn't look like the marmot that I know.  I guess I'll have to research that one.  Everyone that was there, was so excited to see an animal and I kept looking for something larger, like a bear! We arrived back at Logan Pass and hiked to the Overlook at Hidden Lake, which was a 3 mile round trip hike.  It was again, a perfectly pristine area, with the lake and the mountains. We found out that we are out of shape!  Hiking at 7,000 feet elevation isn't the easiest, either, after coming from 900 feet back home.  I know I'm not going to post ALL the pictures I want to from today, so if we get a boring day, I'll come back to some of these places.  It turned out to be a wonderful day.

Big Horned Sheep

Rainbow near Logan Pass

McDonald Lodge

Charter boat at McDonald Lodge

We are at our Earth Cache destination

Sept. 15, 2013

Sept. 15, 2013
It's taken me all day to get over the Badger/AZ State game last night.  Of course, I think it ended wrong, but evidently all the refs didn't!  I've read the articles in the Wisconsin State Journal this morning, before we hit the road, and I guess we all have to move on.  I have never heard of the refs leaving the game with 15 seconds left!   I am impressed with Gary Andersen, the Badger's new coach, as he is just saying, for now, that it's best he doesn't give his opinion of what he thinks.
Today we left Havre, MT and we were glad to get on the road.  We weren't all that impressed with the area, but we did get some fun geo-caching in.  We drove through miles of grain fields and grain storage bins.  In ND it was oil storage bins, and in MT, it's grain.  We saw some very old storage bins made of wood yet, and even a grain elevator that was made of wood.  I guess the farm girl is coming out in me! We saw lots of big ranches and all of them had a lot of horses, of course.  We saw our first sighting of the Rocky Mountains when we reached Shelby.
 We are situated in a wonderful campground at St. Mary's MT, and it is at the East Entrance to the Road to the Sun in Glacier National Park.  We are high atop a hill, overlooking the valley, the river, and the mountains.  This makes up for what we had in Havre!  We'll be here for 5 nights and we'll start our adventure here in the morning.  Our plan is to drive the  Road to the Sun tomorrow, as rain is expected this week and we may be limited as to doing any hiking or seeing wildlife, if it rains.  We have loaded some earthcaches to do on the way tomorrow, and they are always fun, as they point out places of interest.  I wish I had paid this much attention to this sort of thing when I was in high school!
I will share a couple of signs that we saw along the road this week.  One was coming through a reservation area, and it read, "Family Violence is Not a Native Tradition".  The other one was in Rudyard, MT and it read, "Rudyard - 596 nice people and one old store head."
I'm sure we will have some beautiful pictures to share with you after our trip into Glacier.  We expected to see more fall colors by the time we got here, but it will be coming soon.  We were 72 degrees here when we got in, but it is to dip into the 30's this week.  As long as there is no snow, we don't care!

Rows of storage grain bins

Very old wooden grain elevator

Old grain storage bin

Our view from the motor home this week

Sept. 14, 2013

Sept. 14, 2013
Our goal today was to find some caches in the Havre area, and visit the Buffalo Jump.  We had pretty good luck with our geo-caching and saw some more fence post art.  I think we saw the better ones yesterday, but it still amazes me, that Cory Holmes can come up with so many different pieces of art and places them all over the country.  We went to the Buffalo Jump place and they were closed as of Labor Day Weekend.  What a disappointment.  It is called the Wahkpa Chu'gn Buffalo Jump (walk-pa-chew-gun) and is the most extensive and well preserved buffalo jump in the northern Great Plains.  It was discovered by a Havre student, as he was exploring the bluffs at the edge of town, back in 1961.   They claim that three different Native American groups used the site at various times in its 2,000 year history.  They could tell that by the different types of projectile points that were used for hunting buffalo.  The buffalo were rounded up and chased to this high cliff and run over the edge.  When they fell, they were harvested for their hides and meat.  We'll be ready to leave tomorrow for St. Mary's, MT and we will be at the east end of Glacier National Park.  We have had beautiful weather, but they tell us, that it is about to change.  As long as it isn't snow, we're okay with that.  We're gearing up for the Badgers and Arizona State football soon.