Adventures in Geocaching, March 12th, 2015

The Thompson River

Taken March 12th, 2015

Sanders County, Montana

As my regular readers know, I've been geocaching on and off since 2006 when I bought my first Garmin eTrex Legend in Crescent City, California with the idea of it letting me know how far I was walking when hiking on the trails in the various components of Redwood National and State Parks.  Of course I quickly learned that the redwood canopy was too thick for satellite signals to penetrate.  Oh well.  Let's try something different, so remembering that Mr. Grubstake had displayed geocaching items at his restaurant high above Hamilton, Montana, I looked into a new (to me) activity.  At the time, there were over 1500 caches hidden within a 100 mile radius of my house in Smith River, California. When you consider that the house sits three miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, you have to figure that most of those caches are going to be hidden somewhere on land, that is in half that radius.  That was back in 2006.  Today, the geocaching web site doesn't allow you to search more than 30 miles from any given zip code, and there are 563 caches within 30 miles of Smith River.  Back in 2006, I was able to find 37 caches, 20 of them in October alone.  In 2007, I expanded my range outside of California and Oregon, and found 121 caches throughout the Northwest.  I took my eTrex Legend with me on the 6,000 Sunday Drive, and found caches in South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee as well.

Old Structure on the Little Thompson River Road

Sanders County, Montana

From 2008 through 2013, I found a grand total of 18, although four of those were in Florida, the furthest east and south I have been with my passtime.  But while I was not out geocaching, lots of other folk were.  Where there were barely 100 caches within 100 miles of my Missoula, Montana home, now there are thousands.  There are thousands within 100 miles of our home in Plains, and one way to get to know the area, is to go out hunting for them.  In 2014, I set myself the goal of reaching 300 lifetime finds before the end of the year.  By December 31st, I was well past that number, having found 149 caches during the course of the year, and I set a new goal:  500 total by year end 2015.

Winter weather is generally not conducive to searching for things in the woods, but I went out nonetheless and found 10 caches in January and 16 in February.  Then Winter left here in the Northwest, and March was very spring-like.  On March 12th, I set out with the idea of finding caches along a road I'd never traveled, the upper end of the ACM road  where Sanders, Flathead and Lincoln Counties meet.  A group of local geocachers going by the name Clark Fork Valley GeoCachers have placed a series of caches along the ACM road at roughly every 1/10 mile from where the road starts at MT 200 east of Thompson Falls to where it ends at US 2 east of Libby.  We're talking a 40 mile stretch of dirt road with almost 400 geocaches hidden along the way.  This has been my go-to path when I want to add a quick 10 or so finds to my list.

The ACM road was built by the Anaconda Mining Company back in the days when they were logging this area to supply support timbers for the mines in Butte.  There is a county road that parallels the ACM road just a few hundred feet away.  BUT, and it's a big but, there is a river that flows between the two:  the Thompson River.  Both roads run from MT 200 to US 2, and both are heavily salted with geocaches.  I've looked for only a few of the county road caches, but have hit the ACM road more heavily, and today I thought I'd go to the end.  The map made it look as if the ACM road skirted the southern bank of the Thompson Lakes, and I'd never been there, so why not.

Old Barn on the upper Thompson River

Flathead County, Montana

From our house, as the crow flies, it's just a couple miles to the Little Thompson River Pass Road, but it's a bit further by car.  Once on that road, it's an eighteen mile drive up and over the pass on a road that is mostly dirt, although this trip there were patches of snow and ice, and once I started down the western slope, there was a lot of rock that had fallen into the road bed.  I found myself twisting the steering wheel right, then left, then right, just to avoid the rocks.

Once down to the confluence of the Little Thompson and the Thompson, I turned north and headed toward my first cache of the day.  Kevin had bought me a new Garmin Montana 650t GPS unit for Christmas, and I was making the most of it.  For today's trip, I had programmed in some 70 caches along the last seven miles of the road.  The first was an easy find, as were the second, third, fourth, and so on.  It looked like it was going to be a great day, but then I got to number ten.  Nothing.  Couldn't find anything that looked right.  OK.  Spend some time, but then move on.  There are plenty more.  Number eleven started out elusive, but, ah, there it is!  Having found eleven, I walked back to where number ten was supposed to be, thinking that maybe approaching from a different angle would improve my chances.  Nope.  Still nothing at site ten.  And it started snowing.

Middle Thompson Lake looking North

Lincoln County, Montana

I decided to drive on to the end of the road, try to find a new cache hidden along US 2, then turn around and see what I could find on my way home.  The road dumped me out onto Highway 2 much sooner than I expected, but I turned left toward the West, and was quickly up to highway speed.  After fifty miles of dirt road, it felt good to be able to drive faster than 25 mph.  I passed Middle Thompson Lake and looked at my Garmin to find that the new cache I was seeking was still several miles ahead of me.  No, this was not what I was wanting.  I still had to get back home, and the fastest way meant backtracking on the dirt ACM road.  Otherwise, I would have to go all the way to Troy (63 miles), then south to Noxon (43 more miles), where I would still be 70 miles from home.  As an alternative, I could drive east to Kalispell (47 miles), which would put me 85 miles from home.  No, the 50 miles of dirt road seemed like a better option.

Realizing that somehow I had taken a turn off the ACM road, which is why I got to US 2 so quickly, I started looking for my original objective.  And sure enough, just between Middle Thompson Lake and Upper Thompson Lake was my road, and a geocache.  Found that one quickly (ACME 372 was its name), and just as quickly found ACME 371 and 370.  In fact, I found every cache through 364 and stopped along the way to take some pictures of the lake.  By this time it was getting late and I hadn't brought along any lunch.  It was time to stop looking for caches and head on home.

Middle Thompson Lake looking West

Lincoln County, Montana

No problems with the drive, and as I climbed the Little Thompson River Road, I met a road grader moving the rocks I had dodged earlier off the roadbed.  Didn't have to bob and weave so much, just inch my way past the grader, and from there on it was smooth sailing the rest of the way home.  All told I found twenty caches and had a great day out enjoying our beautiful northwestern Montana home.

Caches found:  ACME 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 311 (NOT 310), 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372.

Crazy for the blue, white, red and yellow

Castilleja or Indian Paintbrush

My heart beats true  
For the red white and blue  
Crazy for the blue, white and red  
Crazy for the blue, white and red
And yellow fringe  
Crazy for the blue, white, red and yellow

--Ragni, Rado and MacDermott

To hear The New Broadway Cast Recording version of Hair's "Don't Put It Down," click here.

People spend the Fourth of July in various ways.  They eat hot dogs and potato salad, try to drown themselves in rivers and lakes, watch fireworks, or set themselves on fire, and, rarely, reflect on what it means to be an American.  Very rarely, in my experience.  I spent the day on top of a mountain.  Specifically, I returned to the mountain where I spent Labor Day, 2008 and blogged about here.

Pat's Knob is the second highest peak in the Coeur d'Alène range of the Bitterroot Mountains, and is located just south of Plains.  Standing on my deck, I can see Pat's Knob on the horizon.  Because of its height, the mountain top is covered with various types of antennae and the buildings to house the radios behind those antennae.  Kevin being a HAM operator, we go to the mountain to hear the voice of, well, probably not God.  My Labor Day 2008 blog is all about the radio experience.  This one won't repeat that.

As I noted on Tuesday, I'm working my way through Julia Cameron's The Sound of Paper.  One of the activities Cameron suggests is a daily walk.  Once a week your walk should be over an hour long.  We arrived at the top of the mountain, and while Kevin and his HAM buddies were getting their equipment out, I took off down the mountain.  That's right, I started at the top and walked down hill for half an hour.  In the heat of the day.  Wearing a t-shirt and shorts.  (Note to Greg Johnson, if you're reading this:  the t-shirt was black and had printed over the left breast the words "The Missoula Colony 3.")  Of course the problem with hiking down hill at the start, is that when you're tired and whining, you have to turn around to hike back up the damn hill.  But I was on a quest.  This wasn't just a walk.  This was a WALK, with the intent of communing with nature and spurring on any creativity left in me.  I decided that a good project would be to find and photograph as much of the local flora as possible.  In fact, my first title for today's blog was "Pat's Knob's Flora" and the music I wanted was from the Broadway musical, Flora the Red Menace, Kander and Ebb's first collaboration, the original production of which starred Liza Minella in a Tony winning performance.  Unfortunately, there is no "Life is a Cabaret," or even "Mr. Cellophane" in Flora, and Youtube wasn't helpful.

Gardeners without green thumbs, e.g. myself, can get really frustrated on such hikes.  Just as the forests above Smith River produce wild irises and azaleas that make my own look anemic, the wild raspberries growing with only God's help at 7,000 feet look oh so much healthier than the ones in my berry patch.  Even the grass growing along the road is healthier than my own at home.  Oh who am I kidding.  There is no grass growing at home--except coming up as weeds between the raspberries.

Xerophyllum tenax or Beargrass

But there were lots of things growing up on that mountain, the most impressive being the beargrass.  Beargrass is always a show stopper, and the ones growing on Pat's Knob were no exception.  While I saw other white flowers along the road, most notably Sego Lilies, pussytoes and Queen Anne's Lace (otherwise known as wild carrot), the Beargrass was by far the most notable--if only for its size.

Penstemon hirsutus or Hairy Beardtongue

 I found penstemon right at the top of the mountain, and in isolated patches further down.  I have always liked penstemon, and now have several reasons to back up my favorable opinions.  First, aside from being a widespread plant, blooming over much of western Montana and relatively easy to identify (always a good thing in my book), I happen to like just about anything that can be categorized as "hirsute."  If that weren't enough, according to Wikipedia, penstemon used to be classified as "scrofulous" (well, ok, as a member of the Scrophulariaceae family), but is now a Plantagenet (ok, one of the Plantaginaceae).  As a descendent of the Plantagenets myself, how could I not love such a plant.

DYC or Asteraceae

And just as Ragni, Rado, and MacDermott, remind us, the American flag is usually red, white, blue, AND yellow, as in the yellow fringe that so often surrounds the flag on our school flag poles.  I don't know what this particular flower is.  There are so many different ones that all look alike, at least to the non-botanical eye, so I was happy to learn that Lady Bird Johnson, among others, just called them DYCs, or Damned Yellow Composites.   I grew up calling them Daisies, then learned to call them Composites, and now I find that wildflower books call them Sunflowers or Asters.  It's just too much to keep up with.  I rather like DYC, myself.

Once back on top of the mountain, I pulled out my camp chair and my iPad.  One of the things about being on a mountain with lots of antennae is that you get great reception.  The iPad hooks up to any strong Verizon signal, and sure enough, on top of the Knob I was getting five bars.  I spent the afternoon happily reading e-mail, catching up with Facebook, and other non-productive activities (AKA web surfing).  The HAM guys, however were having troubles, and sure enough, we didn't get back down off the mountain until 6 pm.  Still, I'm not complaining.  I got my work done and am pretty happy with it.  And in case you were wondering, this is what the world looked like from the top.  It was a beautiful way to spend the Fourth.

Looking northwest toward Thompson Falls, Eddy Peak, and, eventually, Idaho.

13 Miles From Paradise

 12 Kay Wood Drive, Plains, Montana 59859

In the aftermath of closing our business, Kevin and I finally came to the decision that in order to pay off the bills, including the loan we had taken out to start the business in the first place, I would have to sell my beloved land in the Bitterroot.  This land had been in my family for almost sixty years, and it was the one place that was a constant as I grew up.  Even after we moved to California, we spent one month each year at the three-room log cabin west of Stevensville.  When Berkeley got to be just too much, and I wanted some solitude to write my dissertation, I asked my parents for the keys to the cabin and in January, 1975, I moved to Montana and lived in the cabin for eight of the snowiest months I've seen since I've been back in the Treasure State.  It was wonderful, I was twenty-five, and the healthiest I've ever been.  I never envisioned losing that place, and for the past thirty years I have dreamt of building my retirement home in a meadow behind the cabin with a glorious view of St. Mary's Mountain to the west.

Ah, but things do change in our lives, and reluctantly I came to understand that my dreams would not come true.  We placed the land for sale and it sold in one day.  Obviously we priced it too low, you can say, but nonetheless we were able to pay off the loan, and start remodeling the house in Missoula, preparing it for sale.  You see, we had decided that if we couldn't retire on our land, then it was time to reinvent our lives, and time to leave Missoula.  We started looking for new digs in June, 2012.

Looking across the deck on a snowy October morning

The first place we checked was Seeley Lake.  Kevin had lived in Seeley years before, and I own a time-share condo at the Double Arrow Ranch there.  It seemed like a good place to start.  A local realtor showed us several places, and one stood out.  I was ready to sign a contract, but the Stevensville sale had not yet closed, and I didn't want to commit money I didn't have in hand.  That's what got us into trouble in the first place.

The next area we checked out was Anaconda/Georgetown Lake.  We only looked at a few homes there, but they were among the most amazing places we saw.  One was a beautiful hand-built log home, high above the valley, and completely off the grid.  Gorgeous views, but did we really want to be that far up the mountain?  We did submit an offer on a home just outside of Anaconda, but in our offer we asked for more than the seller was willing to give, and we refused to counter.  In fact, purchasing the house with its twenty fenced acres, barn, horse stalls, and storage units would have really pressed us financially.  But we would have had enough space for all our stuff--if only by filling up the four storage units that went with the property.  The house even had a nice pond off the front deck.  When I asked if it was possible to swim in the pond, the response I got was "There are fish in it."  OK.  There have been fish in every river and lake I've ever swum in, so what's your point?  I was only wondering if the pond was deep enough for swimming.

One of the three "pet" white-tailed deer that stay around the house, 
driving the dogs crazy

We spent one day looking at property in Lake and Flathead Counties, seeing some beautiful homes just outside of Whitefish, but again, we didn't think the asking price reflected reality--at least not our reality.

In July we started looking in Sanders County.  I'm not sure why, as neither of us had any ties to that northwest corner of Montana.  We phoned several realtors, leaving messages, and one, Denise Goodwin, got right back to us.  Denise was amazing.  She led us all over the county, from Plains to Noxon, and everywhere in between.  The fourth house she showed us was all it took for me.  After seeing the house at 12 Kay Wood Drive, nothing else came close.  Of all the property we looked at in our quest, I had three basic reactions.  Several houses left me feeling that the property could only be improved by bringing in a bulldozer.  Other houses spoke to me saying, "You could make this a home."  The house at 12 Kay Wood Drive said quietly, but very, very clearly, "You ARE home."

We submitted our first offer in late July.  We noted in the offer that while it was possible to build a legal road to the house, there was no legal access currently in place.  The driveway to the house crosses another piece of property and there is no easement given in writing to allow us to use our own driveway.  This could prove to be a problem.  The property we were trying to buy included the house and approximately 6 acres of timbered hillside, subdivided from a larger ranch, with its own cul-de-sac road.  The house was the only house built on that cul-de-sac, the rest of the parcels remaining bare land.

The property we were trying to buy had been foreclosed, and we were dealing with a bank headquartered somewhere back East.  Their response to our note about the driveway was to pull the house from the market, saying that "Obviously the title company has made a mistake, and they will have to fix that problem."  Well, the way we see it, the title company had nothing to do with the driveway, and there was nothing they could do to fix the problem, short of building a brand-new driveway.

An October sunrise viewed from the deck

We submitted a new offer stating that we were aware of the problem and would deal with it ourselves.  The bank responded by hiking the asking price.  WHAT????  After a few more of these insane back and forth paper flows, we gave up, and walked away.  The house at 12 Kay Wood Drive was not supposed to be ours.

I took off the month of August, and spent it driving cross country in my new Saab 9-4x and visiting my family in West Virginia.  I've written up that trip at length in early posts.  Once back in Missoula, Kevin and I half-heartedly looked at some property near Missoula.  We saw one of those "I could make this a home" houses in Lolo, and put in an offer.  As it turns out, the realtor selling the Lolo house was the same one who had listed 12 Kay Wood Drive.  He told us we should put in another offer on the house we loved.  Our offer in Lolo was second, so we lost out on it, but when we went back to Denise, she found that the asking price on Kay Wood had dropped considerably.  We immediately put in an offer for the full asking price, including all the provisions we had stated earlier about the driveway.  This time the bank accepted our offer.  The sale closed on October 12, 2012, three months after we started the process, and I moved in that afternoon.

We've now been here three and a half months.  I'm beginning to believe that we will never be fully moved in, and when I look around, I still feel as if I'm dreaming, or vacationing, or have somehow ended up in a spectacular setting that isn't really mine.  When that happens, the house continues to tell me, quietly but firmly, "You ARE home."

The house sits at the top of the 6 acres, with views to the southeast of Pat's Knob, the second highest peak in the Coeur d'Alene range of the Bitterroot Mountains.  A few years back I wrote a post about spending Labor Day on top of Pat's Knob with Kevin's ham radio folk.  Now I can look out my windows and see the mountain every day.

Looking out our front door--our Christmas card for 2012

The house has an attached, oversized two-car garage, a pantry, a huge kitchen with lots of counter space and cabinets, a formal dining room, a living room with floor to ceiling windows looking out over the property and the valley beyond, a master bedroom suite with his and his closets and a master bath with shower, jetted tub, and two sinks and medicine cabinets (his and his again).  The front entry also sports a half bath, guest closet, and the stairway leading upstairs to the balcony which opens over the living room and three large bedrooms with a full bath.  We sit in the living room and watch our three "pet" white-tailed deer who seem to live on the land and drive our dogs crazy at some point every day.  We also watch our flocks of wild turkeys who strut their stuff across the land at some point every day. 

On the lower level, there is a 3/4 bath (it has a shower, but no tub), the mechanical room, a large family room with wet bar, another bedroom that Kevin is using as an office, and two blind rooms built back into the hillside.  These rooms are each nearly thirty feet long, and as they have no windows, I can put bookcases on all four walls and not block anything.  One of the rooms is now my library/study, where I'm sitting as I write this.  The other has two large floor looms, my piano, guitars and other instruments, storage for my yarn and record collections, and will soon have a 3-manual Rogers organ.

As I said above, for thirty years I had dreamt of building a retirement home on my land.  If the man who designed and built 12 Kay Wood Drive had had access to my dreams, he would have been hard put to come up with anything closer to what I actually wanted.  I am home.

We're out of the way, off the beaten track, but if you don't mind unpacked boxes in almost every room, you're welcome to come visit.  We can even put you up for a while as two of the upstairs bedrooms are fully fitted out with beds, chests of drawers, and dressers.  There's a hide-a-bed couch in Kevin's office as well, and with bathrooms on every floor, there's no need to wait.  Ya'll come.

Part of one of two large flocks of turkeys that visit regularly

Taken out the front door 

And why do I call this 13 miles from Paradise?  Way back in 1975, when Amtrak still crossed southern Montana on the old Northern Pacific rails, my friend Jim came up for a visit.  He crossed Washington and Idaho at night, and woke up when the train came to a stop around 6 am.  Looking out the window, he saw the station sign reading "Paradise."  Jim felt that he wasn't quite ready for that final destination, but I've never forgotten him telling me about it.  Well, don't ya know, our new home is just outside of Plains, Montana, the next town west of Paradise.  Jim's wake up station is just thirteen miles down the road from 12 Kay Wood Drive.  It's now thirty-eight years after I first moved back to Montana, and since Jim woke up in Paradise.  For now, I'm quite content being thirteen miles away.

By the way, should you want to write us, don't use the street address.  We have a post office box.  Our phone numbers are unchanged.  Here's our mailing address:  

Bryan Spellman and Kevin Kerr

P.O. Box 69

Plains  MT 59859 

Sheep on Road

Last Year's View (12/3/2011)

What the sign actually says is "Sheep on Road Next 1 Mile."  It's an electric signboard where someone can change the message, and the power comes from the sun.  For as long as I can remember, it's read just what it said this afternoon.  Usually there are no sheep on the road.  Occasionally there will be one or two.  Last winter, my cousin Ron and I slowed down to follow a pair of rams walking at a leisurely pace down the middle of the west-bound lane.  Oh, did I mention we're talking about Montana Highway 200, between Wild Horse Plains and Thompson Falls?  And the sheep in question are Rocky Mountain Big Horn Sheep (Ovis canadensis canadensis).  The sheep are manifest, blatantly taking their space in the narrow canyons between the Clark Fork River and the rock walls along the north side of the highway.  There are at least three sections of road between Plains and Thompson where you are likely to see sheep, and only on rare occasions have I traveled the twenty-five miles without seeing sheep somewhere along the road.

The View West from Lower Lynch Creek Road

This morning Kevin and I drove into Thompson (the Sanders County Seat) to pay the taxes on our new home, check on employment possibilities with the Sanders County Sheriff's Office (for Kevin, not me), and pick up some groceries so I can use up the Thanksgiving leftovers.  It was a beautiful morning, blue skies, sunshine, hoar frost on the trees, low clouds rising off the river, in short--a great day for a drive.  I always intend to have my camera ready, but I have to admit, that more times than not, the camera ends up left on my desk in the library at home, and I find myself staring at absolutely gorgeous scenes with no way to share them.  No so today.

After stopping at the Post Office to pick up any new mail, then hitting Sinclair for Kevin's morning Pepsi, we turned the big red wagon toward the West, and headed to Thompson Falls.  Now the way I direct people to our new home is by telling them to drive west through Plains (Wild Horse Plains, to give it the full and proper name), drive past the bank, past the hospital, past the dinosaurs (yes, there are three concrete dinosaurs next to the highway), then at milepost 75, turn right onto Lower Lynch Creek Road.  After three and a half miles heading north, you'll come to a junction with a poorly designed road sign.  That is the sign shows the names of both roads, but doesn't indicate which road is which.  Take the left fork onto High Country Road and climb the hill for roughly 9/10s of a mile.  At that point, there will be another fork, and this time you take the right fork onto Baldy View Road.  Baldy is the mountain that rises directly behind the town of Hot Springs,  about eightteen miles north of Plains.  If Hot Springs claims the face of Baldy, I guess we view the back side.

Baldy, as seen from Montana Highway 200

A little further west on 200 and you're in the canyon so loved by the sheep.  This canyon extends most of the way to Thompson Falls, with a few sections where the valley floor might be a mile wide.  Most of the way, the mountains come down to the river on the south, and climb right back up on the north. Often there are rock faces, and these are where the sheep live.  There are several places along the highway where I long to get out with my camera in hand, but places to pull off the highway are few and far between.  One of these days, however...

For this trip, I was content to set my camera on Shutter priority in order to beat the highway speed Kevin was driving, and I took my shots through the windshield and side windows of the truck.  I'm not complaining, although usually I am not happy with the results when I try this trick.  In the past, however, I've kept the camera on Aperture Priority, and often end up with very blurred foregrounds.

The River, the Railroad, the Highway, and the Mountains Beyond

In Thompson Falls, we stopped at the Court House and paid our property taxes.  Kevin tried to catch up with a colleague in the Sheriff's Office, unsuccessfully, and we headed to Genki for lunch.  Genki is an "Asian Fusion" restaurant, which means, as near as I can tell, that the menu is a mixture of Japanese and Chinese dishes, as are the decorations on the wall.  Kevin and I both had the daily special "A" which consisted of a cup of egg drop soup, a serving of shrimp and veggie tempura (one shrimp, one slice of yam, one slice of zucchini), a serving of sweet and sour chicken, and a ball of rice which served as the East China Sea separating Japan and China, at least gastronomically.  I'm not normally a fan of egg drop soup, but this was quite tasty, easily the best I've had.  The tempura and chicken were both very good, and I left pleased with my meal.  I have no idea how such a restaurant will survive in meat and potatoes Thompson Falls, but I wondered the same thing about the restaurant that used to reside in exactly the same location.  Years ago, my friend Vaun Stevens and I drove to Thompson for the simple reason that Montana Magazine had reviewed a restaurant there and named it one of the best in Montana.  I cannot at this point summon the name of that place, but I'll never forget the experience of walking in, sitting down, and having the owner ask what we wanted--refusing to give us a menu as he didn't want to limit our choices.  I no longer remember what either of us ordered, but I do remember the meal was superb, and I also remember a special treat that the owner set down before us.  Sliced strawberries in a brown liquid that he identified only after we praised the dish.  That was my introduction to Balsamic vinegar.  I asked him at the time how he planned on surviving in Thompson Falls, Montana, with a choice of entrees that would please the most jaded big city palate.  I didn't ask the folks at Genki that question, but I do wish them well.

The Thompson River at Montana Highway 200

On the way home, I grabbed a quick shot of the Thompson River, just barely catching the river in the frame as I aimed my camera past Kevin out the driver's side window of the pickup. I set the camera on the floor, content to ride home enjoying the day.  The sun was not in a spot conducive to good photography, and besides, I figured I had a nice selection of shots already.

What the sign actually says is "Sheep on Road Next 1 Mile."  It's an electric signboard where someone can change the message, and the power comes from the sun.  For as long as I can remember, it's read just what it said this afternoon.  Usually there are no sheep on the road.  Occasionally there will be one or two.  This afternoon, what the sign should have said was "Sheep on Road Immediately In Front of Your Truck and Before You Ever Actually Reach This Sign."  Kevin hit the brakes as the five sheep, three rams and a couple of ewes, raced across the road directly in front of us.  At one point, all I could see was the tail end of a sheep so close to the hood of the truck I have no idea why we didn't hit it.  But we didn't, and I guess that's what really counts.  It doesn't matter that it all happened so quickly that I didn't have time to pick up the camera and shoot the damn sheep!

P.S. If you're coming to visit, and I really wish you would, once you turn off High Country onto Baldy View, you'll drive a short ways till you see a road leading off to the left with a street sign reading Kay Wood Dr.  Turn onto Kay Wood and proceed to the end of the road. That's where you'll find us--the only house on the street and clear at the end.  The door is open and the light is on.  Ya'll come!

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.