A Snowy Day on the River

Snowy Day in the Coeur d'Alene Range

12/18/2014

Munson Creek Trailhead, Sanders County, Montana

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

To hear Michael Bublé sing Let it snow, click here.

Wednesday turned out to be a beautiful day, bright, sunlit, not terribly cold.  The kind of day that should get you outside and active.  Especially since the forecast was for rain and/or snow for the next several days.  I debated whether to stay home and work on chores, or go out and enjoy the weather, but ended up staying home.  I know, the chores will always be there, but still...

Thursday brought snow flurries.  Nothing major, but the skies were not at all conducive to good photography and who knew what the day would bring in terms of temperature.  So of course, I loaded my camera and GPS in the car and headed out toward Thompson Falls with the intent of getting some new smiley faces on my own personal geocaching map.  (A smiley face indicates that you have found a cache.)

My first stop was about ten miles west just off Highway 200 at the trailhead for the Munson Creek trail.  There are two caches hidden here, and I had found one last May.  The second, appropriately named Munson Creek Too (sic), eluded me.  My eTrex Legend had me going in circles and no cache was to be found.  This time, with the 650t at hand, I ended up looking about 30 feet away from where I was last May, and this time there was the cache, almost in plain sight.  I sure do love this new tool.  Now it turns out that the cache owner has changed the co-ordinates, so I can't be sure just how much better the new tool is, since the old one had incorrect information.  But the important thing is that I was able to mark this cache as found.

Back in the parking lot I took a couple of pictures, including the one at the top of this post.  It wasn't a good day for photography, but I had to try.

Down the road a piece was another cache I had been unable to find.  Located at a pull off where there are lots of signs telling about Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep, this cache proved elusive yet again.  Before when I tried, I was using the geocaching app on my iPhone, and my phone ran out of power before I was able to locate the cache.  This time, my 650t led me to the same general area as the iPhone, but no matter where I stood, the arrow pointed me into the center of a very large wild rose bush.  I could not see any cache standing outside the rose, and frankly, didn't care to tear myself to shreds on the thorns.  The last time someone found this cache was on my birthday, October 17th, and several people found it then.  My guess is that they were all together.  I'll try this one again sometime.

The Clark Fork River

12/18/2014

Sanders County, Montana

Equally elusive was the cache on the river side of the road named "I Found This Cache Humerus."  The cache is hidden along a semi-circular pull out that manages to be dangerous to enter and exit.  None-the-less, I pulled in and almost immediately found two piles of deer bones, one of which, I suppose, could have been a leg bone.  No cache, though.  I did get a new view of the river from the site, and, again, while conditions were not ideal, I'm pleased enough with the photo to post it here.

I drove by my next unclaimed cache, Saleesh House, as the most logical place to park, I thought, was in the middle of the construction zone where the Montana Department of Transportation is building a new bridge across the Thompson River.  I see now on the geocaching.com map, that there is probably a better place to park and access the site, so I'll try it one day soon.

A group calling themselves the Clark Fork Valley Geocachers has hidden a series of caches all along highway 200 from the Idaho line to east of Thompson Falls.  They call these the MOSBY caches, an acronym for Montana's Own Scenic BywaY.  To date there are 54 of the MOSBY caches, and yesterday I found five--the five located east of town.  The cache owners have provided very specific hints for these caches, which make them quick park and grab finds.  I did have to notify the owners that the log for number 54 was so wet that it was almost impossible to sign my name, and when I got to number 50, I parked and found the magnetic container at the base of a stop sign in full view of two Sanders County Sheriff's Department vehicles.  I just know that one of these days I will be arrested by Homeland Security officers who will have absolutely no concept of geocaching and no sense of humor.  Fortunately, this time I seem to have escaped unnoticed.

I missed the cache hidden by the grocery store on the east side of Thompson Falls, but found another down the road hidden by the same cachers.  I had never driven down this road before, and thus was able to add to my knowledge of Thompson Falls.  Back on Highway 200, I began searching for another series, this one called Summer Fun, which was placed in an effort to teach young people how to use GPS units.  What a great way to indocrinate, er mentor, young people.  I was able to find caches 1, 5, 8 and 9, but had no luck with 2, 6 or 10, caches others have not been able to find either.  I didn't try for 3, 4, or 7, at least not this time, as 4 would have me crossing the grounds of the high school and I'd rather do that on a Saturday.  Maybe tomorrow.

David Thompson Memorial

12/18/2014

Thompson Falls, Montana

Summer Fun 8 and 9 are near the monument to David Thompson, a location I thought would be perfect for a cache.  Indeed, someone else had that same thought and the cache located there is called Pioneer Geographer.  Unfortunately, I was not able to find this cache, and I heeded the owner's request not to dismantle the memorial in looking for it.  I talk a lot about Thompson so I'll just note that the plaque on the memorial reads:

DAVID THOMPSON

1770-1857

PIONEER GEOGRAPHER

"Koo-Koo-Sint"  The man who looked

at the stars

Built Salish House Near the Mouth

of Thompson River 1808

I missed the next four caches I sought, and my GPS was beginning to act up--probably due to a need to be fed some more electricity--so I called it a day, turned around and headed home.  I did get the cache hidden on the pedestrian bridge leading to the island in the middle of the Clark Fork near the Thompson Falls Dam.  I also got one more picture of swans on the river.  All in all it was a good day, with eleven caches added to my "Found" list, and more than a few that will still be waiting for me on another day.

Swans (yes they're there) on the River

Thompson Falls Dam

12/18/2014

Thompson Falls, Montana

Star Gazer and the Swan

Trumpeter Swans on the Flathead River

12/11/2014

Near Perma, Montana

She'd her apron wrapped around her
And he took her for a swan
But oh and alas
It was she, Polly Von.

To hear Peter, Paul and Mary sing this beautiful Irish ballad, click here.

We seem to have a large population of Trumpeter Swans in our area this fall.  At least I'm assuming they are Trumpeter Swans, the largest bird native to North America.  They are known to live in both Ninepipes and Pablo National Wildlife Refuges, both of which are close to us, just to the east of Sanders County in Lake County.  They could be Tundra Swans, which are slightly smaller.  All the guides I consulted said that it is hard to tell the two species apart.  As a very amateur ornithologist, with at best an 800 mm lens set up on my camera, I was could not get a clear enough shot of the birds to be able to detect whether they have a red spot (Trumpeter) or a yellow spot (Tundra) on their bills--but apparently, even that distinction doesn't always apply.  In any event, I set out yesterday to see what I could find, since I usually see the birds on the river when Kevin is driving and I have no chance of getting a decent shot of them.  In my sightings, they range from the reservoir at Thompson Falls in the west almost to Dixon in the east, and are most commonly seen in the area around Seepay Creek, west of Perma.  That's where I saw these birds yesterday, and I crossed a barbed wire fence, trespassing on someone's land, to get the picture shown above.

In actuality, I set off yesterday to do two things I dearly love, geocaching and photography.  Last spring, I had the opportunity to use a Garmin Montana GPS unit, and while I found it somewhat frustrating--being handed an expensive and complicated tool with no instructions on how to use the thing--the more research I did, the more I felt that I had to add one of these to my own arsenal.  Accordingly, when Kevin asked what I wanted for Christmas, I had no trouble coming up with a response.  Kevin ordered one on-line and it was delivered Wednesday afternoon.  I debated whether I should open the box, or wrap it and put it under the tree, but in the end, I followed my doctor's orders (I had asked my Facebook friends what I should do and my physician said "Go definitely," so I went.)  Most of the rest of my friends who responded agreed that I should start using the thing immediately.  After all, life is short and we have no promises for tomorrow.  Right?

Pat's Knob as seen from MT Highway 28

12/11/2014

Near Plains, Montana

I got started geocaching back in 2006, while I was in California during the last year of my mother's life.  I bought a Garmin eTrex Legend and thought it would be a good tool for measuring how far I was hiking through the redwoods each week.  Turns out, the overstory in a redwood forest is generally so thick that the satellites can't penetrate the foliage, and the unit was useless for my purposes.  It was, however, ideal for searching out geocaches.  And if you don't know about geocaching, I recommend visiting geocaching.com to learn more about this passtime.  The best description I've seen is "I use multi-million dollar US Government equipment to find Tupperware containers in the woods.   What do you do for fun?"  Geocaching got its start in the Portland, Oregon area, and has grown into a world wide hobby.  At the time I started, there were over 1,500 caches hidden within a 100 mile radius of my California home, and as that home sits three miles from the Pacific Ocean, you have to figure that at least half that circle is under water.  By comparison, there were only about a hundred or so caches within 100 miles of Missoula, Montana in 2006.   To show how much the hobby has grown, there are now 6,178 caches within 100 miles of Plains, Montana.  I don't want to do the math.  You can see the exponential growth for yourself.  Suffice it to say that there are plenty to keep me busy for the rest of my life, and that's without leaving home.  Caches are hidden world-wide from Afghanistan (250) to Zimbabwe (188), and recently a cache was taken into space and placed in the Russian section of the International Space Station.  I don't think I'll be finding that one any time soon.

The Flathead River at Koo-Koo-Sint Fishing Access

12/11/2014

Near Paradise, Montana

I enjoy combining geocaching with photography, and the camera around my neck is a good excuse for me to be out in the open, searching around for something hidden.  Who knows, maybe I just lost my lens cap and that's why I'm down on the ground digging around the base of a tree.  It's handy to have such an excuse because you really want to protect the cache from "muggles," as non-cachers are known--people who might move or even destroy a cache should they become aware of its existence.

Armed with my Christmas present, I set off yesterday morning in search of a couple of caches that had been eluding me.  I figured it would be a good test to see just how much better the Montana 650t is over my old eTrex Legend.  And oh my, I have to say I fell in love with the new toy, er tool.  Workers at the Clark Fork Valley Hospital have placed four caches on the hospital grounds, and I had been unable to find two.  (I hadn't even attempted the other two.)  With my new unit in hand, I drove to the site of the first cache, and walked right to the cache.  I can't explain why I was unable to find it before as it seemed very obvious this time.  What I do know is that using my eTrex Legend, the coordinates appeared to be all over the place, and this time, with the Montana 650t, they stayed fixed in one location--the place where the cache was hidden.

Well now, if that was so easy, what about finding another cache that had successfully resisted my efforts.  Montana Highway 28 runs 47 miles from Plains at the southwest end to Elmo at the northeast.  There are 19 geocaches along that route--all but one right alongside the highway.  I had previously found 16 of the caches, avoiding the one that was two miles off the highway and not attempting one where major construction was being done at the time.  But one cache, appropriately called Spam, had stayed hidden even though I went back three times, and even took Kevin with me to try to find the darned thing.  I used my eTrex Legend.  I used the geocaching app on my iPhone.  I knew I was in the right area, but again, the co-ordinates were all over the place.  I could stand in one spot and be told that I was 4 feet from the cache, but if I circled around and came back to that same location, I would see that I was now 28 feet from the cache.  Frustrating doesn't begin to describe the situation.  Yesterday, with my Montana 650t, I found the cache--if not immediately, then pretty quickly.  And in fact, the new GPS led me directly to the cache.  It's my fault if I didn't see it right away.

The Perma Pictographs

12/11/2014

Near Perma, Montana

Driving back toward Plains, I stopped at the site where construction had stymied me last Spring, and quickly found the diabolically clever cache hidden there.  I also took the first of yesterday's photos, the view of Pat's Knob shown above.  Pat's Knob is the second highest peak in the Coeur d'Alene range of the Bitterroot Mountains, and I have written about it and my trips up the mountain several times in the past.  John W. Patrick was one of the earliest white settlers in the Plains area, and the Plains Chamber of Commerce explains the mountain's name on their website.

After a quick lunch at Subway, I headed east on Montana 200 in an attempt to find more of the caches hidden in this area.  The first place I stopped was at the Koo-koo-sint Fishing Access on the Flathead River.  David Thompson is the most important person in the northwest you've never heard of.  At least that's what I believe.  Thompson is the man the British government sent out to beat Lewis and Clark and thus solidify Great Britain's claims to the Oregon Country.  He didn't succeed, but in the attempt, he did more to map the Northwest than anyone else.  His name lives on in Sanders County through the Thompson River, the Little Thompson River, the Thompson Lakes, and of course the Sanders County Seat, Thompson Falls.  Because of his habit of going out at night, sextant in hand, the Salish people living in this area called him Koo-koo-sint, or Star Gazer.  Two locations in Sanders County bear the Salish name, the other being a hiking trail between Plains and Thompson Falls.  Thompson has become one of my heroes, and I heartily recommend that you learn everything you can about him.

Just east of the fishing access, Highway 200 enters the Flathead Indian Reservation.  This is the only place you can cross into the Reservation without seeing a sign so stating.  According to a friend and former Tribal Chair, James Steele Jr., the tribe got tired of constantly replacing the sign and no longer notes the change in jurisdiction.  I picked up a couple more caches along Highway 200, one of which was at a beautiful spot on the north side of the river, west of Perma.  This is a sacred site for the people of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and one should approach it with reverence.  Unfortunately, that has not always been the response of visitors to the Perma Pictographs, and many of the scenes have been destroyed.  I have to admit, that I was unable to see any writing on the rock walls, but the location itself is so beautiful and so peaceful, that I can see many returns in the future.

All told, I added seven new caches to my list of those found, bringing me to a lifetime total of 295 finds.  My goal for 2014 is to pass 300.  With only five to go, and with this great tool now at my disposal, I don't think that will be a problem.

Camas Creek entering the Flathead River

12/11/2014

Perma, Montana

New Yaak Times

Oo ah oo ah oo oo, Kitty
Tell us about the boy
From New York City
Oo ah oo ah come on, Kitty
Tell us about the boy
From New York City

George Davis & John T. Taylor

To hear the Manhattan Transfer sing Boy From New York City, click here.

Thompson River
Taken 7/26/09
Sanders County, Montana

Clicking on a photo or a link will open a new window. In my opinion, these photos look much better at full screen, so that's what will happen should you click on one. You also have the option of seeing all the edited photos from this trip on my Picasa web gallery.

In the early days of vehicular traffic, Montana's cities sold license plates printed with the city name on the plate. In the early 1930s, Montana standardized plates state-wide, using a one or two digit code to designate the county of registration. This system remains in place today, although with the advent first of vanity plates and then affinity plates, more and more cars sport the three letter, three number system used by so many other states. Montanans of my generation can still tell you what county a car comes from if the car owner just gets the no extra cost regular plate. The county numbers haven't changed since they were first introduced over seventy years ago. They represent the political clout a given county had in the state legislature back when the system was first introduced.

Lincoln County is neither the smallest county in area, nor the last county created in the state. It has never been the smallest county in population either, but in a state with fifty-six counties, Lincoln County vehicles bear the number 56. This reflects the remoteness of the northwestern most county in a very remote and sparsely populated state. And in remote Lincoln County, far from any possible madding crowd, flows the Yaak River. After spending Saturday on the Blackfoot River, on Sunday we climbed in the back seat of Mike and Norm's 1997 Lincoln Town Car and headed north and west. We were going to see the Yaak.

As I noted in my post Adventures in HDR after having spent a day on the edge of Glacier Park, we had planned to drive back and head across the Going to the Sun Highway. This would be a very long day, however, and we were worried if Norm had the stamina for the trip. Norm, however, had other ideas. He wanted to see the Yaak. Of the four of us, only Kevin had ever been to the Yaak, so in time we agreed, and Sunday's drive, while no shorter than the planned Glacier trip, presented a fascinating collage of rivers, forests, mountains, lakes, rain and sunshine.

When Mike and Norm first moved to Montana from Memphis, they bought land and a cabin just outside Thompson Falls, the county seat of Sanders County (number 35 on our license plates). Thompson Falls proved too remote when Norm was needing dialysis three times a week, which meant a two-hundred-mile round trip drive to Missoula for each session. They sold their place in Thompson, found a house just across the railroad tracks from us, and moved to Missoula. Mike, Norm, Kevin and I get together roughly three times a week for dinner, ham radio events, or sight-seeing jaunts across western Montana.

We left Missoula (county number 4) heading north on US 93 and crossed into Lake County (number 15) just south of the town of Arlee on the Flathead Indian Reservation. At Ravalli, we turned west on Montana highway 200, and followed the Flathead River toward its confluence with the Clark Fork just east of Paradise. (I could make a comment about being East of Eden, but I'll forego that pleasure.) Along the way we crossed into Sanders County, and stopped to pick up some road food at the supermarket in Thompson.

Our route north from Thompson took us on a forest service road (read dirt and gravel, not pavement) along the western bank of the Thompson River. Who is this Thompson anyway? Well, David Thompson (1770-1857) was an explorer, a fur trapper, and as one web-site puts it, "arguably the greatest geographer the world has ever known." You can find more information on Thompson than you probably ever would want by clicking here.

Thompson River Valley Farm
Taken 7/26/09
Sanders County, Montana

Now if you remember your US History lessons, prior to the signing of the Oregon Treaty in 1846, all the land north of the 42nd parallel and west of the Rocky Mountains was in dispute. The US referred to this area as Oregon Country and the British called it the Columbia Department of the Hudson's Bay Company. You may have heard of a campaign slogan from the 1840s, "Fifty-four forty or fight." This slogan referred to the southern boundary of Russian America (established in 1825), the area we now know as Alaska, which was simultaneously the northern boundary of Oregon Country/Columbia District. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "Manifest Destiny" which also refers to the fact that Americans felt it their God-given right to control all land from the Atlantic to the Pacific, including all of Oregon Country. President Polk campaigned on the issue of securing America's northwest, but in the end chose to compromise with the British, rather than fight them, and the 49th parallel was set as the international boundary. Polk found other ways to be belligerent, however, and at the same time add to the US land mass by sending in troops to fight the Mexicans, understandably upset over the loss of Texas. Unfortunately for the Mexicans, they lost this war which led to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which added the land south of the 42nd parallel and west of the Rockies to the U.S. In short, having already lost Texas in 1845, Mexico lost an additional 55% of its land thanks to this treaty. If you live in the states of California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona and New Mexico, and that part of Colorado and Wyoming west of the Rockies (and south of the 42nd parallel), you live in what was Mexico until the 1840s. The little bit of Arizona and New Mexico that wasn't ceded by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was then purchased from Mexico in 1853 in what is known as the Gadsden Purchase. The purchase was supposed to include considerably more land than we actually took, but for some reason, the Mexicans, having first lost Texas then everything west of the Rockies through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, just didn't want to give up any more land. Go figure.

But this post covers the Northwest, not the Southwest, so let's return to David Thompson, the Hudson Bay Company and Oregon Country. More specifically, let's return to Sanders and Lincoln Counties, Montana, where Thompson, in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company, left his name on just about every topographical feature to be found. As we drove north along the Thompson River, the rain began to fall. It would follow us, off and on, the rest of the day.

In time, we reached US highway 2, and turned west toward the Lincoln County seat of Libby. Libby has become known nationally, and perhaps world-wide, because of the law suits against the W.R. Grace Company who until recently mined vermiculite there. The resulting asbestos exposure has made life a living hell for many Libby residents. Asbestos be damned, we said, and stopped for breakfast at the Treasure Mountain Casino Restaurant. My $4.99 steak and eggs breakfast was one of the best breakfasts I've had. And you certainly couldn't beat the price.

Yaak Falls
Taken 7/26/09
Lincoln County, Montana

Having fed both ourselves and the Lincoln, we continued west on 2 through the town of Troy. When we first turned onto Highway 2, we passed a chain of lakes, also named for David Thompson. At Libby our route took us alongside the Kootenai River which has its headwaters in Canada, flows south into Montana, west into Idaho, north back into Canada, and finally joins the Columbia. Western Montana is a mountainous region, and the average elevation across the state is close to 3,000 feet. Missoula, for example sits at 3200 feet. At Troy, the mountains above us made it hard to believe that the lowest point in the state is where the Kootenai River crosses into Idaho (1800 feet in elevation). Less than five miles from the Idaho state line, we turned north to follow the Yaak, and immediately began climbing.

We stopped to check out a campground on the Yaak, then again at Yaak Falls where both I and my camera got thoroughly soaked. No I didn't fall in the river or over the falls, but the rain picked up again while I was studying a group of teen-aged boys who were climbing the falls then jumping off the cliffs into the river below.

Boys will be boys
Taken 7/26/09
Yaak Falls, Lincoln County Montana

Back in the car, soaked to the skin, I kept quiet as we drove through the town of Yaak--ok, the wide spot in the road known as Yaak. I would have liked to stop at the bar and asked if the newspaper was still being published. Yes, I'm afraid it's true, there used to be a paper, or maybe more of a newsletter, printed up and distributed under the name of The New Yaak Times. According to the Library of Congress, this paper was printed monthly in Bonner's Ferry Idaho, just across the state line. The road continued to twist, turn and climb, until sixty miles from the lowest point in the state, we crossed a pass at nearly 7,000 feet. From there we descended toward the Kootenai River and Lake Koocanusa--a reservoir held back by Libby Dam and named because it's the Kootenai River (KOO) and covers ground in both Canada (CAN) and the US (USA). Bet you'd never have figured that one out.

By this time it was getting late. The GPS unit on the Lincoln's dash was warning us that we needed coffee, and we were all getting tired. A quick stop in the town of Eureka where I found a rare 1958 Packard--well a 1958 Studebaker that had a special nose and Packard badges showing how the mighty fall--then south on US 93 into Flathead County (Number 7--bet ya thought I'd forgotten my county numbers), through the resort community of Whitefish, the county seat of Kalispell, and alongside Flathead Lake which brought us back into Lake County, Missoula County, and home.

Lake Koocanusa near Eureka, Montana
Taken 7/26/09
Lincoln County, Montana

I won't speak for Norm and Mike, but Kevin and I were exhausted and glad to climb into bed once we gave Rocky his shot of insulin. And as for the Yaak? I can't wait to get back up there.

Till next time.