Planes on Trains

Our big plans for the day were to move to the co-host site at the Elks lodge.  Actually, we planned to move a lot of our stuff over there and then park the truck there while we took the RV into the tire shop to have them look at a slow leak.  Well…half of that didn’t happen.  The tire shop isn’t able to get us in until Thursday.  So, we moved the motorhome to the new site and got set up.  After lunch we decided to check out the big and tall store in north Spokane to see if we could find some better fitting shirts for Ken.  We got there, the selection was very limited, but he did pick out three shirts that were acceptable for what he wanted.  The other day, someone told us to check out the Big R to see if they had any big and tall shirts.  As we got there, we saw a train parked across the road hauling six 737 airplane bodies.

We had no luck finding shirts at Big R, so we returned to the RV and I got the shirts from Cabelas all packaged up so we could take them by the UPS store to have them returned to get a refund.  So we hopped back into the truck and dropped the package off at UPS.  After our return to the RV, and after dinner, our good friend Mike dropped by for a visit.  He’s in Spokane for the night before flying to Austin, TX to visit his daughter.  It was a good visit and now Ken has to plan on an early get up for the tire shop in the morning.  That’s it for now.

Grandsons are Great…Especially for Washing and Waxing the RV!!

Our luck held out and our grandsons showed up to wash and wax the motorhome on Monday.  Demetrius showed up at about 10:30am along with Brandon who is now living with them.  We got the wash bucket and brushes ready and sent them up to the roof to begin the job.  Brandon is on the left and Demetrius is on the right.

Laura dropped off Dominique about a half hour later after getting his permanent cast on his leg.  Ken had a project that he would be able to do while sitting in a chair buffing the headlights.  Demetrius and Brandon in the meantime had finished the roof and started washing down the side of the RV.  That was a good time for me to getaway and pick up some Subway sandwiches for lunch.  Dominique went along for the ride and we made our first stop at Walgreens to pick up something to go over the cast so that he will be able to take a shower without it (the cast) getting wet.  I’m sure we’ll all appreciate that.  By the time we got back with the sandwiches, Demetrius and Brandon had finished washing the RV and were ready to start waxing.  After lunch, they started waxing the RV at the back then working up the driver side.  At one point, we thought a power buffer might make the job go faster…but we failed to read the complete directions and the boys decided that they would continue the job without the power equipment.

Even with the cast on his leg, Dominique was able to sit on a pad on the ground and wax the lower parts of the RV.  Here is was taking a brief break to do some text messaging (or whatever) before Demetrius and Brandon asked him to get busy helping again to finish the job.

Brandon, Dominique and Demetrius hard at work.

Demetrius and Brandon are working on the final side of the RV.  The end of the job is near!

After the workday had ended, Dominique’s cast had dried enough that we were all able to sign it.  After Demetrius’ graduation he got a downstairs bedroom all to himself with special amenities.  Since Dominique broke his foot, he is sharing the room.  In this next photo, Demetrius is signing the bottom of Dominique’s cast with wording something like “Get well soon so I can have my room back”.  Ahhh…brotherly love!

We had an early start Tuesday morning as we had a doctor appointment at 8:15am.  That appointment went fairly quickly and we drove over to Pines to have breakfast at Little Euro.  From there we drove to the bank and Harbor Freight.  While there, I received a call that our order from Cabelas had been received so we drove to Coeur d’Alene to pick up some new shirts for Ken.  During our errand in Coeur d’Alene, Ken’s brother called and we made arrangements to meet them for lunch on the south hill at 1pm.  Sometimes, it seems like our days are revolved around eating.  We had one other stop in Coeur d’Alene then returned to Spokane for a couple of stops before meeting Ron and Mary Ann and their grandson Erik on the south hill for lunch.  When we returned to the RV, we had a quiet afternoon before getting together with the RV hosts after dinner for goodbyes to Ron and Sandy who are heading out in the morning.

Back at the Spokane Elks

We returned to the Spokane Elks on Friday and will be here for a couple of weeks or so until we leave for the Olympic Peninsula.

One of the Wheeling Elks members was celebrating his 80th birthday at the lodge on Saturday afternoon so we joined in to wish him a happy birthday.

Our daughter Laura had invited us out to a barbecue that evening.  The only grandson at home was Dominique who is slightly grounded by a broken ankle.  After football practice the other day he and his friends were in the school parking lot and he decided to jump on the hood of another friend’s car.  The friend stepped on the brakes and Dominique fell off the hood breaking his ankle.  He’s very lucky that the injury wasn’t any worse than that.

If our plans work out, our grandsons will be driving out here tomorrow to wash and wax the RV, so hopefully their wallets are empty enough that they’ll want to show up and do that for us.

8/23/12–North Idaho Fair

We spent a good portion of Thursday at the North Idaho Fair at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds and got in a lot of walking.

I can’t remember what the type of cow this was, but it has a brahma like hump on it’s back.  You can also see a couple of camels in the background.

We had fair food for lunch and ate like a….

These two young men were holding owls that had been rescued.  This one had lost a wing and is unable to fly.

It’s always interesting to see the old farm equipment.

Later that night at the Elks, we went into the lodge for their taco dinner.

8/22/12–Cataldo, ID to Coeur d’Alene, ID

Our drive today from Cataldo to Coeur d’Alene was right around 30 miles and an easy drive over the 4th of July Pass and along Lake Coeur d’Alene.

The first area of the lake we go by is Wolf Lodge Bay.

And driving down the final hill into Coeur d’Alene we can see the main part of the lake.

After lunch, we received a phone call from our friends Doug and Marilee and made plans to go their house for dinner.  They had some other long time friends visiting from Michigan and we had a great evening visiting and eating with all of them.  The evening went fast and before long it was time to return to the RV to watch some tv and relax.

8/20–8/21/12–Lunches with Friends and Driving the Silver Valley

Our plans for Monday were to meet our friend Jerry and his wife Candy in Wallace to join them for lunch.  We started out early enough to have some time before lunch, but before even getting out of the campground we had a really flat tire caused by a screw through it.  By the time we got the spare on, dropped off the flat to be fixed and arrived in Wallace, it was time for lunch.  We met Jerry in his office and we were soon met by Candy.  We walked over to the 1313 Club for lunch.  This was the first time we met Candy so the loud atmosphere while dining didn’t really help, but we did enjoy the visit with them.

After arriving in Cataldo on Sunday, we drove up the river and had lunch at the Enaville Resort (aka the Snake Pit) for lunch.  I didn’t get a photo on Sunday, so I got one today.  It has been around since about 1880 and at one time was a bordello.  When we first moved to north Idaho in the mid 70’s, the owner was Josie Bates ( a former madam) and she was quite the personality.  It was not unusual for her to let the locals run a tab for their dinner and pay her back later.

One of the areas that has been developed since we left the area is above the golf course in Pinehurst and it was a former dairy farm.  This is the old barn that is still barely standing in that area.

This is our campsite in Kahnderosa RV Campground in Cataldo.  The front of the RV is facing south, and the Coeur d’Alene River is to our left.  It’s still been in the 90’s so we’re glad to have the shade of this tree.  Facing to the south in the heat of the day hasn’t been so great however.

Today (Tuesday) we drove up the Coeur d’Alene River to have lunch with our former hunting partners Jim and Mary Lou.  Jim wanted to move their Dish Network satellite dish to another pole that was more stable, so Ken helped him with that.  While they were working on that project, I helped Mary Lou with some problems she had on her computer.  After getting satellite dishes and computers somewhat back to normal, we all went to the Prichard Tavern for lunch.  Mary Lou and her late husband Walt were proprietors there shortly after we moved to the Silver Valley of Idaho.

Jim and Mary Lou in front of the Prichard Tavern.

We were hoping to catch up with a couple of other friends while here, but our paths did not cross.  Tomorrow we will be on the road again heading just a few miles west

to Coeur d’Alene where we’ll be staying at the Elks lodge while we meet up with our longtime friends Doug and Marilee and may even go to the North Idaho Fair.

And another update…we just went outside to watch the International Space Station for a 4 minute flyover and had a pretty crescent moon overhead tonight even though the photo doesn’t do it justice.

Back in Our Hometown–Cataldo, Idaho–For a Few Days

Saturday we loaded the ATV into the truck, dumped tanks, and got set up so that we would just be on electric for the night so that we wouldn’t have much to do Sunday morning giving us a better start to beat the heat.  We drove to Lee and Barb’s campsite and visited with them over happy hour and then enjoyed a great dinner of ribs and pasta salad, and later some watermelon.  We really appreciated that as it was one less thing to do Saturday night.  We had a really enjoyable time with them exploring ATV trails around St Regis, finding geocaching, and picking huckleberries.

We’d been meaning to visit several friends in the Silver Valley (Shoshone County) in Idaho earlier while in Spokane, but just couldn’t find the time to make the long drive.  So after leaving St Regis this morning we drove around 70 miles and are now camped along the Coeur d’Alene River in Cataldo, Idaho, our old hometown of 25+ years.  The RV club from the Spokane Elks (Ken’s lodge) were spending the weekend in Wallace, Idaho for the Huckleberry Festival.  As soon as we were situated in our campsite, we drove to Wallace to find that most of them had already headed back to Spokane and the Huckleberry Festival wasn’t happening on Sunday.

From there, we decided to just drive around to see what had changed since we were last here.  We had lunch at the Enaville Resort aka The Snakepit.  We had wanted to see the owner who wasn’t there today, but we were waited on by Lisa who has been a waitress there off and on for years and she also went to school with our daughter.  After lunch, we continued up the river noticing a very crowded river.  There were many more rafters than what we’ve seen over holiday weekends in the past years.  These two pictures are just a sampling and don’t really show the true congestion of rafters.

This photo is just an example of the cars you can now see parked along the river for access to it continues all along the river.

What had once been farms all up and down the river, are now RV sites and they are also very congested.

A very small section of the river still looked pristine and not congested.

One of the favorite places along the river for swimmers is close to where the old and new roads meet on the Coeur d’Alene River.  It’s called Castle Rock by the locals and there is a deep swimming hole in the river below it.  The first photo is as we’re approaching it on the old side of the river and the second is as we’re headed back down the river on the new road.  We had some good times jumping of that rock in the past, and with the temperatures close to 100 degrees today, I’m sure everyone here is really having a good time.

This last photo is of what’s left of our old property in Cataldo.  The trees in the middle and right side are ones that we planted in the early 1980’s and basically everything you see below those trees was our 2.5 acres.  It bordered I-90 which is just below the building in the middle of the photo.

We will be in Cataldo for at least 3 nights while visiting friends in this area and then will probably return to Spokane for a week to 10 days before heading to western Washington.

8/16–8/17/12–ATV Ride, Berry Picking & Geocaching

After lunch on Thursday, we took our ATV’s along with Lee and Barb on a loop over Two Mile.  Here are a couple of photos from that ride.

At the saddle before heading back down the remainder of the loop we found another good patch of huckleberries and took time to pick some more.  The ride back down was not as dry and we several areas with wildflowers.

Indian paintbrush

Fireweed

Ken is holding up our bag of huckleberries.  There’s a bit more than a half gallon altogether.

Today (Friday) we headed out on the ATV’s as Barb had mapped out some more geocaches to find before the heat of the day.  First we went down by the golf course and spent several minutes looking without any luck, so we decided to check out the next one down the road and possibly come back to the first one.  At the second cache, we met Beadgal who has hidden several of the geocaches in this area.  Her husband, son and daughter-in-law have also hidden several caches in the area.  We had a nice chat with her and she went back to the first cache with us to give us an added hint.  We found it, and continued on our way and found 3 more geocaches before returning to the RV for the remainder of the day.  It’s about time to head down to Lee and Barb’s for the evening fire, so that’s it for tonight.

8/15/12–Coal Creek ATV Ride

Lee and Barb had to run some errands in Missoula on Wednesday, so we decided to go back up Coal Creek and check out some of the other roads and pick some huckleberries.

Here are a couple of photos of the views we had from up that road.

We harvested a little over a quart of huckleberries.  It will be nice to have them in the freezer for future use.  When we got back to the campground, we took the truck into town to check out the Talking Bird Saloon.  In our years of living in Cataldo, Idaho we had stopped by here in the past several times.  The lower left side of the cage is a list of the bird’s vocabulary and the bird itself is in the middle of the cage toward the right side.

Back at the RV, we had dinner and relaxed for the evening.

An ATV Ride to Keystone and Down Sloway

We had a good ATV ride today.  We left the campground around 11am with our lunches packed.  We turned at Railroad Way after crossing the river and headed south to the Southside Road.  I only took a couple of photos today and both of them were from stops for geocaches.

All of the photos today were taken with my cell phone and it would have been better to have brought the good camera as there was a bald eagle in the middle of this shot.  I tried bringing it in for a better photo, but it wasn’t worth the effort….sorry!

After going back into the geocaching website tonight and logging in our caches for the last few days, it looks like we found six today.  I only found one to log for our finds on Friday, but I thought we had found two, so I’m waiting for a report from the Dream Catchers.

We have had some terrific sightings of the International Space Station flying over St Regis this week.  So far, all of the sighting have lasted for 5 minutes more or less and Big Sky Country has lived up to it’s name.  We missed out on the meteor shower the other night, but the best of that was supposed to be between 1am and 4am…not our normal waking hours.

We haven’t made any plans for Tuesday, so we’ll see what happens next!

8/10- 8/12/12 –ATV Ride and Huckleberries and Downtime over the Weekend

Friday afternoon we went out for another ATV ride across the river from town.  Here are a couple of the views we had from the trail.

Thanks to Barb who sent me this photo of us riding our ATV.  I’ll have to return the favor.

The ride today ended up being one where we had to take the same roads back as there was no loop.  Before we reached the end of the trail, I had spotted some places to stop for huckleberries.  Here’s Lee down off the edge of the road picking and handing them up to Ken who was in charge of the container.

Lee’s busy picking while Ken is watching (?) the container.

We continued to pick and eat until I felt we had enough and invited Lee and Barb to our place for huckleberry sourdough pancakes on Saturday morning.

I didn’t take any photos over the weekend, but we all enjoyed a brunch on Saturday morning dining on the huckleberry pancakes and bacon.  There were even enough left over so that Ken and I had some for Sunday breakfast.  Other than that, we stayed at the campground letting the weekend warriors rule the forest service roads.

8/9/12–Chores at the RV and Errands in Superior, MT

While I took care of some things inside the RV, Ken spent the morning outside working on adding a piece of plastic to the ATV to help keep the heat off our legs.  He got to a point where he needed a part to attach the piece to the ATV, so we headed to Superior in search of a hardware store.  We looked all around town and finally went into the lumber store and picked up an item that might work.  We decided to stop for a hamburger in a diner that is in an old school house in town.  They were apparently short handed and it was quite a long wait for our meal, but well worth it once we got it.  Our waitress was quite the trusting soul, as she kept dropping off her tips on our table and left Ken in charge of watching over it.

After lunch, we went to the grocery store in town to pick up things we needed before heading back to the RV.

8/8/12–Campground Owner Appreciation Day

There are quite a few RVers in this campground who love it here so much they’ve been staying here for a long time…Lee and Barb are among that group.  They originally planned to stay for a week and it will be close to two months by the time they finally leave.  Anyway, the owners of the campground are Jim and Shirley and they have been so great that it was decided to have an appreciation day for them complete with cake and ice cream.

This is our neighbor Nancy serving lemonade and cake.  She and her husband were given the use of a golf cart and were designated as the Senior Irrigation Team as they’ve been busy watering the grassy areas between RV sites.

Shirley is the campground owner along with her husband Jim.

Hmm…I just see I did something crazy in the editing of this photo and will try to fix it later (or not).  Shirley’s husband Jim is toward the center of this photo in a yellow shirt.  To his left is Barb and Lee is in the right foreground.

Later that day while visiting at Lee and Barb’s campsite, the wild turkeys ran through the grass in about the center of this photo slightly above the gravel road.