Saturday, June 4- Washington to British Columbia

After rearranging our things among our suitcases, we went a few miles up the road to Martha’s Restaurant.  The building had been an Arby’s.  You order at the counter and take your beverages and a number to a table, to which the rest of your meal is delivered.    We both had omelets-Jim’s was garden, stuffed with a variety of vegetable; Ardith’s was bacon and cheese.  Both were huge and tasty and were served with toast and a large mass of home fries. Neither of us finished our meal.

We drove through a very beautiful pass, past more snowy peaks and for a time paralleling the Columbia River.  We attempted to pull off at an overlook, but the road was blocked with about 8 inches of snow.

We also passed an area that had been hit by a forest fire probably 5 to 10 years earlier.  There were lots of young trees coming along nicely.  Occasional fires are quite healthy for forests.

The passage was along Route 20.  We were supposed to take it to Rt. 97 in Tonasket, Washington.  When we got to the town, there was a policeman indicating that we needed to detour.  We saw some members of the local high school band heading to cars.  After guessing our way along back streets, we got to Route 97.  Signs indicate that it was Founders Day and that there was a rodeo.

After several miles through apple growing country, we got to the Canadian border.  We first were stopped by 2 US Customs agents.  I think they like to amuse themselves with border crossers.  After asking about where we were headed and if either of us had been arrested, they asked questions like which side Maryland was on in the Civil War.  There were two lanes for Canadian customs.  One lane had a large truck with 3 cars in front of us; the other had just 2 cars, so we chose that.  The first car was gone in seconds.  The agents spent a very long time with the car in front of us.  About 6 vehicles passed in the other lane.  The car in front of us was directed to a spot to be inspected.  We got through quickly.

Once in British Columbia, we stopped at the visitors’ center and picked up maps and brochures.  When we got back to the car, we saw chewing gum stretched from the car’s tire.  

We drove through more apple orchards, then crossed other mountains and valleys.  We stopped at a trail leading to a beaver pond.  We didn’t see any beavers, but the water was amazingly clear.  The aroma there drove Jim’s nose to nostalgia.  When he was a kid, his family had a little log cabin with incense that came out with the trains at Christmas time.  The smell was the same – balsam, most likely. It was as intense as the pine in South Dakota, but distinctly different.  There was a duck there that was very different than ones I know from the East.

There was a group of cars stopped by the side of the road with people out.  They were watching bears.  Jim hopped out to get pictures.  He was just in time: they started sauntering away as soon as he raised his camera.  He though they were brown bears, then had a thought they may have been grizzlies.  When he got internet access and a chance to look at his pictures and decided his first guess was correct.  Their coloration reminded Jim of the Duke Ellington piece “Black, Brown and Beige”.

Jim hiked another trail in the forest.  It was called the Rhododendron – Cascade trail.  He thought he would get to a waterfall, but there was none.  There were lots of rhododendrons, but none were yet in bloom – probably 1 and a half to 2 weeks away.  The ones at home were fading as we left.  Jim discovered that Cascade was the name of the Provincial Park they were traversing.

We are staying in a lovely room at the Heritage Inn in Hope, BC.  It is more than twice as big as last night’s room and there are plenty of lights.

Dinner tonight was at the Home restaurant within easy walking distance of our room.  We shared the spinach salad that came with Ardith’s meal.  It was especially tasty, including sharp cheddar, fresh grated Monterrey jack, mushrooms and a house dressing.  Jim had a seniors’ portion of schnitzel which included broccoli and a huge mound of rice with carrots, a tiny amount of onion and parsley.  He couldn’t finish it.  Ardith had the pot roast special, smothered with onions and including mashed potatoes and broccoli.  Both were very pleased with their meal.  No room for dessert, even though we skipped lunch.  Too bad – they had a lot of unusual pies like bumbleberry, raisin and rhubarb.

It got progressively warmer today.  A T-shirt was quite sufficient.  The car now has 3440 miles.  We are one fifth of the way through our journey, but we shouldn’t have as many long runs over the next several weeks.

Friday, June 3 Montana, Idaho and Washington

Today’s drive was really beautiful.  Again, the sky was incredibly beautiful most of the time. Instead of seeing snow-capped peaks in the distance, we climbed up to the level of the snow and crossed the continental divide.

Temperatures were in the low-to-mid 40s from when we left Missoula until we descended to Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho, where it was very close to 50.  We stopped at a rest stop where there were lots of small squirrels and one chipmunk.  Several of the squirrels came almost to the feet of people and stood to beg for a treat.  They appeared to live in holes in the ground at the rest stop.

Coeur d’ Alene is a charming town, at least the parts we saw.  We had lunch at Jimmy’s Down the Street Restaurant.  The inside has walls covered with license plates from most (all?) states and other memorabilia.  Jim really liked his taco omelet.  Ardith’s BLT was just right. This restaurant was featured on a TV program called Diners, Drive-ins and Dives in February of 2010.

We then took a walk in Coeur d’ Alene’s gorgeous lakefront park. 

 One of the fun features of the park was a set of signs that had excerpts from a children’s book about the adventures of a moose in the city.  The signs also had maps.  Adjacent to each of these signs was a statue of the moose.  We also saw a tour boat pull up to the dock and unload about 100 very orderly kids who eventually stood along the railing of the dock for a chat about ducks.

After more miles of breathtaking scenery, we ended our day in Corville, Washington. 

 Jim wanted to stay in a cheap motel.  Ardith wasn’t very happy with him.  The room was very small and didn’t have much light, but it was clean and the bed comfortable.  The couple that manage it were very pleasant and chatted with us for quite a while. We took a walk to the city park and also walked 3 blocks to Stephani’s Oak Street Grill which were both recommended by our motel managers.  The place was really beautiful.  One interesting design element was the use of 3 doors with lots of glass tied together at an edge and braced so they were equally opened.  These were used as table separators.  They gave a feeling of separation from adjacent tables but left views in.  Very effective.  Jim and Ardith both ordered one of the evening’s specials.  Jim had the Crispy Ocean Grill.  He wanted fish but didn’t think about the word crispy meaning deep batter fried.  He usually avoids that to limit fat intake, but enjoyed it.  Ardith had prime rib with pot stickers.  That also included a yummy baked potato that had sour cream with a great balance of herbs.  Jim had a huckleberry wine  (nice to have once, wouldn’t want it regularly) and huckleberry vinaigrette on his salad (very tasty).  They also had several huckleberry desserts, but we were both stuffed.

The posts for many of the street lights in downtown Coville have silhouettes of local wildlife attached to them – each different.

Our car had been driven 3157 miles, but it got to ride on a flatbed truck for 70 miles..

Thursday, June 2 Across Montana

We waited at our motel while the auto shop ran the diagnostics on the car to see why the warning lights were on.  They found that the anti-lock brake sensor was slightly out of adjustment and corrected that problem. It was a very expensive cure for a very small problem.  By noontime we had been picked up by their courtesy van, paid the very expensive bill, and we were back on the road again. Between the towing and the repair, it was well over $500.

We drove through beautiful country with incredible skies.  Now we know why they call this “big sky country”.  There were snowcapped mountains ahead of us. 

We stopped in Big Timber and ate lunch in the Grand Hotel.  It was a delightful country restaurant with lots of locals eating lunch.  Jim had Italian Tomato soup and sandwich and Ardith had a club sandwich.  Both of us were pleased with the quality of the meal. We stopped in the local pharmacy to buy toothpaste.  The pharmacy looked like something from the 50s.  The pharmacist was moving through the place chatting with customers and directing folks to what they were looking for.

We got back on the road and headed to Missoula, Montana.  We stayed in a motel (Ponderosa Lodge)  that looked a bit old from the outside but the room was huge! 

The owner was very pleasant and recommended the restaurant (Press Box)  across the road that was part of a sports bar and small casino. Our table was right next to greenhouse style windows, which was quite comfortable.

Our waitress was a mess.  We discovered that it was her first day on the job and there was no one nearby to mentor her.  It took forever to be served.  She had to ask us several times what we had ordered, and wasn’t really familiar with the menu.  The food was fine, and more than either of us could finish. Jim had a teriyaki rice bowl with lots of veggies and chicken in it. Ardith had baked ziti with Italian sausages in it. 

We returned to our room rather stuffed.

Wednesday, June 1 South Dakota to Montana

We had the package breakfast at Wrangler: eggs, meat, toast, hash browns.  We packed our stuff and left the charming Mile Hi motel.

It was time to fill our miserly Prius with gas.  In most stations in South Dakota (and some other states), Plus gas is cheaper than regular.  This is due to heavy ethanol subsidies.  The ethanol supposedly reduces gas mileage.  Ours is definitely less, but we attributed that to lots of high speed driving.

We drove through another arm of Custer State Park.  After we passed through another tunnel, we began a series of steep switchbacks.  For the next half hour, things were mostly downhill.  This resulted in lots of 100+ miles per gallon bars on the car’s readout.

Our tourist stop for today is the Black Hills Mining Museum in Lead (pronounced leed) South Dakota.  This museum has a lot of exhibits mainly focused on gold mining in the area.  The nearby Homestake Mine was the largest gold mine in the Americas, but ceased operation in 2002.  Its tunnels are still the deepest mine tunnels anywhere – over 8000 ft deep.  The US Department of Energy is using one of the deep tunnels as a place to trap nutrinos – particles similar to electrons, but with no charge. 

The exhibits were very good, but the special thing about the museum is the tour of a simulated mine below the museum building.  The tour showed how mining operations evolved over the years, using mannequins with real artifacts.  It showed everything from drilling techniques to blast hole arrangements to hauling operations to signals for the “man cages” used to raise and lower the miners.  They even had the equivalent of a porta-potty. 

Old miner's gear vs modern gear                                                              pottty

We asked the folks in the museum about a place for lunch.  The guy at the desk recommended the Stampmill – just a block away.  When we got there, it was closed and for sale.  Across the street was Spankies Cafe and we decided to try it.  They were just into their second week of business and apparently only had 2 things on their menu – hamburgers and chili.  Our server (Jim thought possibly male, Ardith thought female) emphasized the hamburgers were freshly made, so that is what we ordered.  They were quite good.  The server and the place were quite charming.  We shared a slice of peach pie that was just made that morning.  Yummm!

Another block downhill was the open pit portion of the Homestake Mine.  

There were several interesting old buildings in Lead.  Jim was intrigued with an old Coca Cola mural on the side of a building adjacent to an alley.

Ardith drove out of Lead.  After a few dozen miles, Jim closed his eyes.  When he awoke, he realized that he had slept through Wyoming!  (It was only about 15 miles).  We had chosen to take US 212 instead of I-90.  It cut off about 50 miles.  The road was quite good and uncrowded and we drove about 75-80 mph.  About 60 miles into Montana, we stopped at the welcome rest stop.  The guy there said that there was a big mud slide that blocked 212 and we would need to detour up to I-94, adding about 60 miles to our trip.  To console ourselves, we took an ice cream break at a spot that also sold a lot of countrified knick-knacks.  

The detour took us through some beautiful country and we were making very good time when all of a sudden five lights on the instrument panel lit up.  It looked like an emergency Christmas tree!  We were very lucky to be right next to a rest stop so we pulled in, shut off the car and waited for a while to see if the emergency lights would come on again.  They did so we called AAA and waited about 30 minutes for a very friendly tow truck owner.  We were 70 miles outside of Billings, Montana.  He towed us into the city, dropped the car off at the auto shop, and drove us to a nearby motel.  We had a delightful chat with him on the ride into Billings.  He pointed out many flooded areas, the result of some very heavy rains.  Farmers have fields too wet for planting, and they are concerned about what will happen when winter snow starts to melt and fill the same rivers.

After all the time and energy it took with our car problems, we had no time or desire for dinner.

Tuesday, May 31 More of Black Hills

If it wasn’t for writing this blog, we probably wouldn’t have any idea what day it was.  Ardith really likes the Wrangler Cafe because it is such a community gathering place.  Jim is fine with it.  The staff is really nice and the food is good, if not exotic.  Its entrance is probably 50 yards from our room.  This morning, Jim had a big bowl of oatmeal with blueberries and Ardith had French toast and sausage.  Neither of us could quite finish.

We got ourselves moving early this morning because we wanted to catch an old-timey train that was supposed to leave at 11 from the town of Keystone, which is near Mt. Rushmore and we had to purchase tickets at least 45 minutes early.  We also wanted to see some of Mt. Rushmore beforehand.  We went to the depot which is in a souvenir shop.  The woman working there said that the actual departure time would be 11:15 and that the girl selling the tickets wouldn’t be in until 10:15 or so, but the clerk made a reservation for us.  She also informed us that it was 8:15 AM.  We thought it was 9:15.  We failed to recognize the time change in the middle of South Dakota and have been an hour early the past two days.  When we arrived at our motel room Sunday, Ardith thought the clock was wrong and reset it. 

 

 This gave us 2 hours to tour Mt. Rushmore.  Jim had read that the light was best before 10:30 AM and it was great while we were there.  They charge $11 to park your car (but the pass is good for a whole year) but admission is free.  The visitors’ center is quite good.  It tells the extensive history of the conceptualization and construction of the monument.  The construction’s incredible dangers were well illustrated.  Workers used jackhammers while suspended long distances in boson’s chairs.  Remarkably, none of the 400 workers were killed.  The monument was the idea of the South Dakota state historian.  The work directed by sculptor Gutzom Borglum and his son Lincoln.  It was begun 1927 and finished a month and a half before World War II began.  The father had visions of it having bodies and not just heads of presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, but he died 6 months before the last head was finished.

We also went to the sculptor’s studio where the last of eleven 1:12 scale (one inch to one foot) models was displayed.  Plans changed several times due to the physical characteristics of the granite and Borglum made new models to reflect reality.   The ranger used a volunteer to illustrate how the models were used atop the mountain to guide the work on its face.  

Jim decided the monument still had room for a 5^th great person and depicted it with his camera.

Next we returned to Keystone, purchased our tickets and had a snack.  The girl who was working in the snack place was quite charming and chatty, but had no clues about geography or the difference between geology and archaeology.  While we were just finishing up, we heard the train whistle.  Ardith hurried across the street to get a place in line.  Jim scampered up some stairs to get a good photo viewpoint.

The train operates on a former mining branch of the Burlington Northern Railroad.  Our train was pulled by the only Baldwin 2-6-6-2T engine still in service.  The engine is articulated, meaning it bends in the middle.  It is an oil powered steam engine.  There are water towers at both ends of the 10 mile line and it refills each trip.  Since there was no turntable or wye, the engine decoupled from the front of the train, switched to a parallel track, then attached to the other end, so he would be going backwards and we forward.

There were 7 cars on the train.  On the way to Hill City, we rode in a car that was built in 1913 and saw service in 3 other railroads.  It had stained glass above its windows.

The trip goes up and down grades that are between 4 and 6 percent (relatively steep) and lets you peer into lots of homes, ranches, old mine entrances, and natural areas along the way.

When we got to Hill City, we saw the town’s athletic fields completely inundated.  They had 6 inches of rain in 10 days and the streams were all massively overflowing their banks.

We had a very light lunch (Ardith: hot dog, Jim: nachos) then walked around the area where rolling stock awaiting restoration was being restored.  This is in conjunction with the South Dakota Railroad Museum.  Jim would have loved to pay a visit, but there wasn’t enough time.

Jim and Ardith separated during this.  Before doing so, the consulted on which car they would ride on the return trip.  Ardith said “any car that doesn’t have the screaming child from the trip up”.  They decided on a converted car that had originally been designed to carry water and ice for crews.  There were only about a dozen people on the car, but 10 minutes into the trip, we realized that the screamer (a girl about 3 or 4) was among them.

Yesterday, there were 2 mysteries we pondered at Custer State Park: there were lots of freshly cut trees down and there were areas where the trees were dying and turning brown.  We found the answer to both at the Mount Rushmore Visitors' Center and on the train.  The pine bark beetle has been attacking the forests of the Black Hills.  One of the most effective ways to control them is to vastly thin out the trees.  The ones that are left have far less competition for sun, water and soil nutrients.  After they cut trees and take away the useful logs for lumber, they put the leftover branches in big piles to be burned in the winter when forest fire danger is low.

As we were driving to the Crazy Horse Memorial, Jim saw an interesting rock formation and had Ardith stop so he could get a picture.  After looking a bit more carefully, he summoned Ardith out of the car, so she could see the profile of George Washington from Mount Rushmore.  The light was just right for it, but was poor for the main view of the monument.

Like Mt. Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial is a massive stone carving.  It was the idea of a Lakota chief to honor the heritage of all Native Americans.  The mid-afternoon light was just right for the Crazy Horse Memorial.  When we passed by early in the morning, it was in the shadow of its mountain.

The memorial is being funded entirely by fees ($10 per person admission) and donations (lots of opportunities presented).  The original sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowsk, was adamant about refusing government money.  For the first few years, he did everything with his own money.  He lived in a tent for 7 months (including winter) while he built his studio / residence.  He had worked on Mount Rushmore for several years.   Work was started on the monument in 1948 and still has many years to go.  Korczak died in 1982 and work is being carried on by his wife and 7 of his 10 children. Crazy Horse’s head is 87 feet high, compared to 60 feet for each of the presidents on Rushmore.  If it is ever finished, it will be the world’s largest sculpture.  Work on the finger is scheduled to start Friday by 10 volunteer mining engineers from Canada.

We took a tour of the grounds.  We had two guides, both Lakota.  One was a very animated 21 year old female, the other a young male in his late teens who hardly spoke a word.  The young woman had a constant smile on her face.  The tour led through a myriad of ways to spend or donate money, but also was informative.  The foundation that oversees the site has ambitions far beyond finishing the monument.  They have established the Indian Museum of North America, which has a lot of mostly contemporary artifacts.  It doesn’t appear to be well curated, but there are a lot of nice object.  

 They have also established a university.  Last year, their first, they had 20 students in a summer-only program that gives 12 credits that they claim will be accepted by any US university.  This summer, they expect 36.

One important piece of the tour was the scale model of the expected finished product.  It is of scale 1 to 37 vs. the 1 to 12 for Rushmore.

They also took us into the sculptors’ studio.  There were several pieces in clay, marble and wood by Korczak.  We also noted a bust of Wild Bill Hitchcock by 2 sculptors: one of Korczak’s daughters and the other we speculated to be the grandson of Gutzom Borglum, designer of Mount Rushmore.

We needed to stop 6 times today for road construction.  Something we have done before and expect to do many more times this trip.

An important non-touring task is laundry.  There was a very nice laundromat that we could almost touch from our room.  We returned to the Wrangler Cafe for our last dinner there.  Ardith had steak and Jim had a huge buffalo burger smothered in chili, onions and cheese.