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.
1 comment:
what memories you brought back. I first moved to North Idaho in 1972 and took my son fishing along the CDA river. It was a lonely wild place back then. I mapped the Silver Valley in the 80's for soil survey, and walked every square mile from Pinehurst to Lookout Pass. I lived in Wallace for awhile. I love Oregon, but I miss Northern Idaho and that whole area sometimes. Your photos reminded me.
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