What a blast this trip was! Good visits, tours and beautiful country all the way. We had such fun together…except when a good-sized rock hit our windshield right behind the rear-view mirror just an hour away from home as we began the trip. It scared us but we decided to continue as it didn’t impair our driving vision.
Our first real destination was Oldtown, Idaho, where Jerri’s oldest son, Erik, lives with his family along with his menagerie of chickens, ducks, dogs and Nathan, the squirrel. Occasional wild turkeys cruise through his property along with deer and other critters. The trees to the right of the house are a dense forest. He lives on the wild side.Merideth, a Polish chicken, who is very sweet, likes to be held and doesn’t poop on you.Nathan, the squirrelHuckleberryJerri and I got to dine on Erik’s special sourdough crust pizza that he cooks in a smoker. OH MY! Delicioso!!! There were no leftovers! Rosana makes a great breakfast but I ate it all before I thought of a photo (several times).Freeman Lake where Erik goes ice fishing in the winter.Metalline Falls, WA, only 16 miles from Canada. Beautiful, very historic mining townThe family with the duck house, the duck pool and forest in the background. In Montana: Jerri and I left our hotel before dawn to ensure arrival in time for our Glacier National Park tour. We crossed the Continental Divide at Logan Pass at an altitude of 6,646’. This is a view of the Going-to- the-Sun Road. Our 17-passenger Red Bus of 1936 vintage. What a treat to get to ride in this old bus that afforded us many spectacular views.Ready for the tour in our open-air bus (that created the facial shadows). It was cold at the beginning of the tour.When the bus stopped for a view, we could stand up, hence named the prairie dog pop up. Secret Valley was in the background. If it looks a bit hazy in the background it was because of the Spokane fires. Our day there was the best sky they’d had in weeks.Running Eagle Falls, sometimes called Trick Falls because during spring melt, another fall comes over the top, thus creating two falls.This river was down quite a bit because they, too, had a dry year (for them). Glacier Park has 23 glaciers which are shrinking.Everything is big in Montana. We drove by Flathead Lake that seemed to be bigger than Lake Tahoe by a lot. It has 197 square miles as compared to Tahoe’s 191. Tahoe is much deeper, and thus, holds more water.We had been told we would see many large critters such as bears, elk, moose and many birds such as bald eagles and osprey – ZIP was our tally (although I did see an osprey at Erik’s ice fishing lake.) As we drove through some “wildlife areas” we did see this heart mountain. By chance, we happened upon a Bison Range managed by the confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes. WOW! What a treasure that ‘most everyone would enjoy (provided they don’t get out of their cars)The reserve has 18,766 acres of hilly land along with prairie type areas. We were excited to see a total of 42 bison, the proper term. (Buffalo, technically, live only in Asia and Africa) This guy crossed the road right in front of us. Some of the bison weren’t more than 20’ from the truck.Some of the bison have radio collars that allow the people at the visitor center to tell you which roads/areas have the most activity. Even at that, we saw people driving right by bison lying down and not even looking around. By taking our time, we also saw pronghorn and we think a badger in his lair. No, we didn’t get out of the truck!Our next stop was Philipsburg, an old mining town from about 1878-1930. Silver, sapphire and manganese were extracted in large quantities there. Our hotel was the top floor of this building.We got the last available room in the Broadway Hotel. It was built into the hill, so we had to walk up behind the building to enter it. Our room was named The Crosscut.We set out to explore the town and this was what we saw when we stepped out the hotel doorJerri’s sunset from our room. The hotel’s owner prepared a tasty breakfast the next morning making it even a better place to stay!We then visited Virginia City, Montana; a must visit to compare Nevada’s VC to Montana’s. We enjoyed this town a lot because while there are many historic buildings, they aren’t all tourist shops. Most of the buildings depict what they were originally., i.e., a barber shop would have a couple of chairs along with tools of the trade and mannequins showing how it was in the old days. We liked this town.Nevada City was a short distance from Virginia City and had more historic buildings to view, but we couldn’t go into them. I thought this 2-story outhouse was interesting.
As we drove back to the main highway, we found we were in Beaverhead County. There was Beaverhead or Beaver everything (river, creek, school mascot, streets, etc.) Finally, we found out what Beaverhead was all about. Yay!
This is Beaverhead Rock that is supposed to look like a swimming beaver. It has great historical significance in this part of the country. Aboriginal trails converged here and then it became a meeting place of sorts for Native Americans, trappers and other folks. Lewis and Clark were here, and Sacajawea was reunited with her long-lost brother near here. We had a hard time seeing the beaver at first. (The head is to the right)While still at the Beaverhead lookout, Jerri turned and saw this storm heading toward us.Our last place to visit was Bannack, now a state park. Gold was discovered in 1862 and a lot of it was very pure…often measuring 99% purity.The A student rises to the occasion!Ever versatile, Jerri also preaches to the choir!The Bannack Cemetery – many sad stories there.Jerri’s last storm photo
Apologies for this being so long. We loved visiting family and all the sites we saw. The sites were all so new and exciting to us that we just couldn’t stop talking about them. Hope you weren’t bored.
buzzardnotes 
What a GREAT trip!!!!! I LOVE hearing about these adventures!!!!!
Barbara Allen barblallen@mac.com cell: 714.329.8131
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