Silver Jubilee: Yee-Haw!

It was 25 years ago - tomorrow - that Tom and I said our 'I do's'.  Our silver anniversary is upon us.  Those years went fast!  I decided it called for something special and out of the ordinary, so I made plans.  Thanks to the little Chickies for loving to have their cousin around (and for Rachel & Nels' willingness to have Winston for four days) we were able to get away, child-free!  I actually made the plans to pack up the Expedition with camping supplies and kidnap Tom from work at lunch and take off for the unknown for the weekend.

It pretty much went off without a hitch.  Tom didn't even suspect.  As a matter of fact, he was a bit hesitant to hit the road and just leave everything behind.  But when I offered to start out the driving and he could nap in the back on the mattress - and cushy memory foam - for the first leg of the trip, he started to think this idea was all-right.  After a 40 minute nap, he felt really great about getting out of town. 

 

I didn't make any set plans for where to go, so we decided to head north for Canada.  We'd always wanted to go up and check out the hot springs and lakes up there, so that's what we did.  And we got some Roger's Syrup while we were at it!  (Roger's Syrup is from Canada, and it's Tom's favorite.  Our supply was just about depleted, so it was a good thing we were going where we could get more!)

It was such a great trip.  After we got home and I looked the pictures over, I felt like I should have taken a lot more.  I didn't feel like they captured the moment as well as I'd hoped.  Nevertheless, prepare yourself for the onslaught of photography and narratives!

Our first choice for the night's lodgings.

 

We headed up through Sandpoint and Bonner's Ferry.  We took a couple of little back roads and found some really nice places for camping overnight.  This one was nestled up in the forest, next to a large hill.  The valley on the other side had an Elk preserve and a Anheiser-Busch hops farm.  Go figure.  Anyway, this was an ideal, quiet little spot, so we parked.

 

As we were getting out of the rig, I had just put my foot down on the ground and Tom yelled "Tracy, get back in the car!  Get back in the car now!"  I had visions of lions, tigers and bears coming after me, so I quickly jumped back in and slammed my door shut!  We both sat in the car looking out the windows and I asked Tom what was going on?  Tom said there was a badger in the tall grass right out my side of the car, and it was coming right for me.  I looked and looked but I didn't see any badger.  Tom pulled the car up a bit, then slowly got out.  He wanted to get a picture of it - crazy man!

 

When he walked back behind the car, I looked out his open door, and we heard this hissing-racket in the grass, and a grey striped thing came running at us.  It wasn't a badger, it was a grouse.  It was a pretty good sized bird, not nearly as big as a badger, but when it's feathers were all fluffed up, it really did kind of look like one.  It sure made a lot of noise and it wasn't afraid of us.  Then we saw another one come out from under a tree near where Tom was standing.  We decided we'd better head down the road and find another place to camp for the night.  Plus there were a lot of mosquitos in that spot.

Some pretty Mountain Lillies

Lots of Shasta Daisies

 

As we drove along we saw some elk, and some really big turkeys!

(I didn't get a picture of the turkeys, sorry)

 

We drove across the valley, away from the mountains, and ended up finding an even more beautiful spot on an abandoned train track.  A thunderstorm started up, and we were able to watch it light up the sky behind the mountains across the valley that night.  It was so pretty!

I brought the little one-burner propane stove, and we roasted brauts over the flame and shared a small potato salad and mini cheesecakes for dinner.  Tom had huckleberry and I had key-lime.

YUM!

In the morning, we crossed over into Canada.

We drove north until the road had to cross Kootenay Lake, where we caught the ferry to get to the other side.  It was a pretty big ferry.  Yes, that's a log truck in the back there.

They had a nice seating area where we looked at maps and decided where we wanted to go next.

And we enjoyed the scenery.

We went and checked out the city of Nelson where we found a pretty little park with a BIG waterfall.  (I tried to text Rachel to tell 'Nels we were in Nelson, Ha-ha!' but evidently my phone plan doesn't allow international texts.  Hmmm.)

It was a really neat Japanese memorial garden.  Really pretty, except for the graffiti on some of the statues and stones.  Darn kids!

 

Then we stopped at an A&W, which was also called the 'Chubby Chicken' and had some ice-draft rootbeer in glass mugs.  It was soooooo good!

Then a stop at Safeway to check out the syrup selection and ended up buying some fresh baked cheesy bread.  That was sooooooo gooooood tooooooo!

Next we drove up to Ainsworth Hot Springs to check it out.

We'd always wanted to come try this hot springs out.  The cool thing about it was that it has some old mining caves that they flood with hot water and you can swim back in the caves and explore and soak up the heat.

 

On the day we were there, they were just getting done with their annual cleaning (de-liming/de-scaling)  of the caves and were waiting for the inspection so they could open them up.  The inspector had just arrived, so we decided to soak in the pool and wait and see if we could go in the caves after the inspection.  It was kind of entertaining watching the inspector, in swim trunks, go back into the caves with the owner and an assistant.  They could only be in there for about 10 to 15 minutes at a time because the water is so warm.  They would come out all red-faced and take a breather and drink cool water before going back in.  It was a really long process, and the caves weren't going to be able to be opened while we were there.  Bummer.

 

Oh well, we got a good three-and-a-half hour soak in the pool, took advantage of their nice HOT showers and were only charged half-price since the caves weren't opened.  We'll have to go back again sometime.  As we drove away, we felt so refreshed and clean, but soon began to feel sleepy after that nice long soak.  It was time to find a place to sleep for the night.

We found a spot in a little pull-off that was semi-private right on the banks of the Kootenay Lake, outside of a town called Kaslo.  It was really pretty, but a little bit creepy because there were some camp fire spots that had obviously had recent tenants.  And there was a make-shift tarp tent back in the woods.  Crazy Tom walked right up to it and looked in.  I had horror visions of a wacked-out hobo charging out after him and told him to 'BE CAREFUL!'  In return, he told me 'No worries' it was just a home-made outhouse.  Yuk.

 

We did end up staying the night there, but ended up sharing the spot with some locals who decided to do a little night fishing.  Evidently it was a popular place.  In the morning, Tom took some pictures.  Such a beautiful lake, even if it was a bit cloudy. 

After leaving there, we drove away from that lake, across the mountains to another lake called Slocan Lake.  We visited the quiet little town of New Denver.  Tom really liked it there, and decided we should buy a vacation home there... when we win the lottery... in a million years.

In a park at New Denver

The Lupines were HUGE in Canada.  And there were a lot of different colors of them.  Pinks, purples, yellows and whites.  They were so beautiful!  I probably took about 50 pictures of them.  They were so much bigger than the ones we have here at home.  And they grew everywhere!

In New Denver was a museum for the Japanese Internment that happened during World War II.  There was an old camp there where some of the Japanese spent years during the war.  I wanted to tour it, but we were too early and didn't want to wait around for another hour-and-a-half for it to open.  I'd like to go back sometime and check it out.

Just a peek inside the fence of the camp.

Then we stopped at the local market and got some snacks.

Mmmmmm... Snacks!

 

On our way out, we were told by a local canadian about an old mining ghost town that was worth seeing at least once, so we decided to drive out to it.  It is called Sandon, and there was a lot of galena and siler mined out of that area.  We stopped at the museum and checked out the history of the place.

This was quite the boom town at one time!

 

I took a LOT of pictures in the museum, but I'll only post a few...

Bowling anyone?

Curling champions of Sandon!

Look at the size of that trophy!  Serious business!

 

One thing I loved to see on this trip was that instead of bowling alleys, they had curling rinks all over the place.  Every time we passed another curling rink I would laugh!  It's such a funny sport to watch!  I think I'm a little bit obsessed with it. What's more Canadian than curling, eh?  But I couldn't talk Tom into stopping at one of the rinks for a game of 'curls'.  Ha-ha!

Tom, checking out the photos and documentaries.

 

That river running through the street in the front of the museum used to be Main Street.  In '55 the creek flooded and carried away the other half of the town.  It was never rebuilt after that.

Pretty!

One of the town founders was an american named John M. Harris.  He made it rich in the silver mines here, and decided to do a lot of building in the town.  At the ripe old age of 60-something, he decided to settle down.  He advertised for a wife, and women from all over came to interview for the position.  He chose a woman who was 40 years younger than him.  This is a picture of the silver ring he gave her on their 25th wedding anniversary.  Yes, they made it to the big 25 too!  It was said the silver in this ring came from the mines that he owned in the Sandon area.  I just thought it was kind of cool, being this was our silver anniversary trip. 

 

Incidentally, as a deal when they married he had promised her all of his worldly goods upon his death.  They had a bit of a rocky marriage - I guess he was a bit of a ladies man.  When he finally did pass, in his will he left his wife $1.  Some deal that was.

 

On to the basement...

There was another sign down there that said to 'watch out for trolls'

No ghosts or trolls down here.

Just a handsome husband!

A pretty little geranium in a silver teapot.

Precious!

 (Think they would notice if I nabbed it and took it home with me?)

Funny!

No spitting on the sidewalk, kids!

The creek, where it should be.

I just like to take these kind of shots.

 

Harris was a forward thinking man, and he built an electric station for the town.  They had electricity before a lot of people had it at that time.  It's generators were run by hydro-power from a stream coming off the mountain behind it.  It is still in operation today.  We could hear the generators humming away in there.  The lines looked like they were adding supplementary power to the other lines in the area.

Tom said this is a strange voltage.

I would have no idea.

One of the old steam locomotives that ran the rails through here.

For some reason Vancouver decided to park all of it's old city busses here.  Kind of junky.  But then, kinda cool, too, in a junky-kind-of-way.

Just thought this was funny.

Last stop on the way out of town, driving through the old red-light district.  Molly Brown's... wait, Tom, what are you looking in the windows at?

Another view of Slocan Lake.

Still and smooth as glass.

 

And the water was sooooo clear!

And cold!

Water straight from the mountains.

Soon after, we crossed back into the U.S., just above Metalline Falls.  That is one of my favorite places to go.  I think it seems so romantic up there, even if it's a bit run-down.  I wanted to stay the night there, but it was still a bit early, and Tom wanted to do some more exploring.  So we made a quick stop to check out Boundary Dam.

Pretty impressively built in the rocks there.

Wires strung straight up the cliff.

After leaving Metalline Falls, we headed up into the mountains between Washington and Idaho.  There's a little back road that goes between Metalline Falls and Priest Lake.  It's about a 40 mile road, but takes hours to drive because it's narrow, curvy and bumpy.  It's a good thing we had four-wheel-drive.  We did end up finding snow on the road in a couple of places.  There were also a LOT of downed trees, but luckily someone had been up there before us with a chainsaw and cleared a path.  I don't know what we would have done if we came across them and they weren't cut.  Not too many places to turn around, when the hill goes straight up on one side of the road, and straight down on the other!

 

There were a lot of camping spots along the creek, but they were all taken.  So we went straight up the hill, and on top was this nice camp, all by itself.  We were the only ones up there (human, that is).  We stopped for the night and Tom built a campfire.  He was determined to burn any and all firewood he could find in the imediate area.  It was entertaining to watch.

We had soup, cooked on our burner, and the last of our cheesy bread.

It was so calm and peaceful!

 

Until about 1:00 a.m. when I woke to a thumping noise on the outside of the car.  Then it was a scratchy-thumping noise.  I woke Tom up and he grabbed his 1000 jiggy-whatever-watt spotlight and turned it on.  The whole inside of the car was illuminated, but we couldn't see outside.  The light was too bright.  So Tom decided he was going to open the door and see what was out there.  I didn't like that idea, but before I could say anything - that's what he did.

 

He tromped around, shining his spotlight all over the place.  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing was moving around except for a little mouse that ran across the road.  Tom got back into the car and proceeded to try to fall asleep.  Then I heard the noise again - and Tom heard it again too.  There was a repeat of him hopping out of the car and shining the spotlight under the car, around the car, into the trees...  nothing.  He got back in and no sooner settled down, then there it was again - louder!

 

We decided it must have been a mouse, or a squirrel, or a racoon... or a badger/grouse... but definitely not a bear.  We finally fell asleep to the sound of whatever it was trying to get into the undercarriage of our rig.  In the morning, the minute Tom opened his door and little squirrel chattered at him from a nearby tree.  That was probably the culprit!

 

We headed on down the road in search of coffee and ended up at the Elkin's Resort on Priest Lake.  What a beautiful place!  They were offering a Father's Day brunch for $17.95 and I told Tom we could celebrate his special day by doing that.  He opted to head on into Newport and catch the Egg-McMuffin special at Micky-D's.  That's my husband for ya.

Gotta love that man.

 

What a great way to celebrate our anniversary.  Beautiful scenery and a bit of adventure to boot!  I'm glad I planned this trip - and Tom was glad too.  He had a great time.  And we didn't have to spend a dime (or a looney) on food or lodging.  Only the gas to get us there and back.  (Oh, and the snacks.)...(and syrup).  Wonderful memories!

 

(Then the reality of life hit when we got back home.  Keaton had taken our car to southern Idaho for the weekend.  We are now down one car.  Blown head-gasket and seized engine.  Happy Father's Day, Tom!)