October 1, Harrison, St Maries and Worley, Idaho

Well today I was feeling better so we decided to take a tour around Lake Coeur d Alene to Harrison, St Maries and then to Worley and the Friday night seafood buffet at the casino. Bring on the king crab legs. We had the top of the jeep it was a beautiful sunny day and the GPS was loaded with Geo Caches. There were a bunch of easy ones all the way around the route. About half way around the lake is the town of Harrison. It is a historical little town that had some neat little stores and a very nice art gallery. They were preparing for a homemade brewing competition but we were there too early in the day, they were just setting up for the weekend. While I was looking for a geocache I discovered the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes. This is a 72 mile paved bike path that can be ridden in three sections:

Plummer to Harrison: 15.3 mile ride downhill to Heyburn State Park on Lake Coeur d'Alene, across the Chatcolet Bridge and along the lake shore to Harrison, population 267

Harrison to Enaville: 31.8 miles of flat terrain from the Lake along the Coeur d'Alene River through the isolated Chain Lakes region to Enaville on the North Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River

Enaville to Mullan: 24.3 miles gradually climbing through a series of small towns that make up the famous Silver Valley, until Wallace, when the grade increases to a maximum of 3% as the trail follows the South Fork uphill to Mullan

There are interpretative sites all along the trail informing people about the history of the area, along with warnings about mine waste being present nearby.

September 30, Spokane

On Thursday morning we decided to take a trip into Spokane and check out Harbor Freight. I wanted to get some rotary cutting blades. I had tried a package and they fit my quilting rotary cutter, but these carpet cutting blades work out to about $1.00 a piece instead of $8.00 a piece. I picked up all the packages that they had. I should be good for the whole year. Len also found out that there was the big sidewalk sale on Saturday, so we grabbed a flyer and decided to come back later. We then went across the street to Hancock Fabrics and I picked up some awesome deals. They had a bunch of clearance tables and some of the fabric bolts were 75% off. I am not sure what I am going to use it for but at that price who cares, I will find a project to use it on. We didn’t really have much else to do so we headed back towards Idaho. We stopped into check on the new Walmart in Post Falls and then checked out Cabelas to see if there was anything new. We did find a Television for my Uncle Stuart, but we will wait until we go back to Walmart in Spokane because they don’t charge sales tax to people from BC, might as well get the best deal that we can. Since we really didn’t find anything new we decided to go back to Coeur d Alene and go see a movie. We didn’t really see anything at the local theatre that we wanted to see so we decided to watch one of the new movies that we had picked up at Walmart. Then as usual it was a great dinner and early to bed.

Sept 28 & 29 Coeur d Alene

Our last vacation in the motor home was part of my four days off and we decided to stay close to home because the electricity still wasn’t working properly. We also had to make sure that we had power so we decided to camp at the Blackwell Island RV park in Coeur d Alene. It is a nice RV park just off Highway 95 on the way to Moscow, Idaho. We were going to stay at the Alpine RV Park out by Hayden Lake but they were only open until Saturday and we wanted to stay until Sunday, it turned out that the Blackwell Island site was closer to everything so we didn’t have to do as much driving. I had got a bad cold on the Monday before we left and basically lost my voice, so since I couldn’t work we decided to leave after Len got off work instead of waiting until Thursday morning, I figured I could be sick in my lawn chair recuperating in the sun just as well as I could lying on my couch watching TV. Len got off work at two and we headed south. I slept almost the whole way.

We got to the RV park, got signed in, setup in our spot and I promptly fell asleep in my chair reading a book. We went for a walk around the park in the evening, it is a very nice location, quite big, I imagine in the summer that it is extremely crowded.

Well we got up early on Wednesday morning and decided to go and check out downtown Coeur d Alene. We parked in the downtown lot and went to explore the shopping by the Coeur d Alene resort, because that was the only place that was open this early. As we were walking along we found a very cool toy store, here we found some very interesting educational toys for the grandchildren and a couple of cool games for us. We also found a local book about Mudgy the Moose and his playmate Millie Mouse. They are characters in a book written by a local author and the story takes place throughout the area. There was also a statue of the two characters just outside the store.

We then found an antique consignment store that took up over four stories. It was open on our way back to the car. Earlier in the morning we saw a little dog that was sleeping on a chair in the window, it was black and white and looked just like Lindy and Emma when they were puppies, it looked so lifelike that we both had to look twice to see that it wasn’t real. So since the shop was open we decided to go in and check to see how much that doggie in the window was. It was a bargain at just $4.00 so we got in and found a few more items. Now the puppy sleeps quietly on the arm of the chair where Emma used to sit and watch the neighborhood. After this store we drove out towards the golf course along the lake shore. We stopped for a couple of easy geocaches but I was pretty tired, so we headed back to the campsite. We spent the rest of the day reading and napping.

September Long Weekend, Lockhart Beach

Well it was back to working weekends for me, while Len had them off, so this weekend he headed down to Lockhart Provincial Park. He was there for the Saturday and I joined him for Sunday dinner and then for a few more days. We decided to do a couple days of geocaching.

We headed down to Riondel and did an earth cache at the old Blue Bell Mine and then we did Quintessential Kootenay Lake Cache which was a hike on the Pebble Beach Recreation trail. It was quick walk to the lake, a great view and a slightly longer walk back up. The weather wasn’t the greatest but it was worth the hike.

The next day we headed up the gray creek/Kimberly pass, there was four caches all along the pass, unfortunately the weather was very wet and it had been raining for a couple of days and the caches were a hike in from the road. This meant we would get totally soaked. We were having some problems with getting the motor home to recharge so that meant we couldn’t turn the heater on because that would mean we had no lights, so neither of us was very keen on getting wet. It was neat to travel up over the pass though; I had never been over it. The road was in a lot better shape that we thought that it would be. We got back to the campsite and had a huge fire to warm up. All in all it was a great weekend; mom and dad even joined us for dinner. In fact it was so much fun Len decided to do it again the next weekend. He and Lindy had a great time. It was a little cold but he had a great time fishing, reading and just general relaxing.

August 28, Home Sweet Home

Today we got up fairly early, packed up and headed north to Canada. We cleared the border just after lunch, pulled into the yard, got unloaded, started the laundry and had everything put away before supper. It is great to be on holidays but it is also nice to come home.

August 27, 2010 Oasis Bordello Museum

Today we did a few more geocaches, we visited the memorial to the Sunshine Mine disaster. In May 1972, the Sunshine Mine of Kellogg was the site of one of the worst U.S. mining accidents, resulting in the deaths of 91 miners; as a result, every miner in the U.S. now carries a "self-rescuer" breathing apparatus, which gives the miner a chance to avoid death due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Eight days after the fire started, two men emerged from the mine. They were found on the 4800 ft (1463 m) level of the mine near a fresh air source. All others trapped in the mine had died.

We also found a second hand store in Kellogg where we found some kids books and a very cute teddy bear book shelf and then got directions to a new second hand book store that was located in the back of fish and tackle store in Osborne. After buying a few books we decided to drop the dog off and then head back to Wallace to go on a tour of the Oasis Bordello Museum.

The Oasis Bordello was a cat house that was open in Wallace, Idaho until 1988, yes that’s right 1988 not 1888, while Nancy Reagan was telling America "Just say no," the ladies of the Oasis were saying "Yes" to any man in Wallace with twenty bucks.

The Oasis operated quite openly in Wallace for many years, every so often they would get a heads up from local law enforcement that they should leave town for a couple of days because the Feds were coming. However in 1988 the FBI came to town and instead of staying only for a couple of days they were there for over two years. Seems that they were actually in town to investigate the local sheriff for corruption but the Bordello permanently closed. The current owners have preserved it exactly as it was on that night -- so the museum is also a time machine, providing a view of the late 1980s through the unique prism of prostitutes in Wallace, Idaho, right down to the J.C. Penney catalogs on the coffee table and the video store rental list taped to the kitchen wall.

Visitors enter the brothel the way that its clients did, up a creaking set of stairs and through a triple-deadbolt door. The first room on the tour is the Madame’s bedroom; there is shag carpet on the floor a feather hat/wig that she always wore and a school band uniform, the only thing that is not original in the place. The story goes that the Madame used to buy the local school band new uniforms each year and this was their way of saying thank you. Nearby, the brothel price list is taped to a wall for easy reference, written on a sheet of yellow tablet paper, broken down by sex act and timed to the minute. "Eight minutes, fifteen dollars, straight, no frills,” there was also an exchange rate for Canadians, it seems that the Canadian dollar was only trading at 70 cents on the dollar.

Next of the tour was the waiting room where the men would wait their turn. The green shag carpet was great. We then got to look at each girl’s room. They were all colour coded, there was the red, green, brown, blue and green rooms. Each room was decorated in those colours and they were filled with items that the girls had left behind, seems that when they used to leave they would only pack enough for a couple days because they would come back, but since they didn’t the rooms had a number of personal items in it, including underwear, books, perfume, hairspray ect.

In the bordello’s bathroom, there was a tub and a toilet but no shower or curtain and this was for all the women in the house. There were seven different medicine cabinets -- one for each girl, labeled in the colour of her room.

The kitchen at the Oasis was also its nerve center. There was a cash box for each room and a wind-up kitchen timers, one for each sex room. "When the bell rang, the maid knocked on the door and said, 'Time's up!'" Michelle explained. Then Michelle pulled open a drawer extra timers. "They were so busy they went through a lot of timers."

According to Michelle, a woman at the Oasis could make as much as $2,000 a week. That was after the Madame was paid her share and room and board.

In the broom closet, along with bottles of Scope and cans of Lysol and carpet cleaner were several dozen red light bulbs, still in their corrugated paper packages. Most of the bulbs in the brothel were red, Michelle said. "The red light gives you a nice glow." There was also a complete bar which the maids would sell the customers waiting at $8 a glass for a highball, which was almost as much as the sex was.

The bordello used to employ four or five local women, at least three a day to be the maids of the place. They were in charge of cleaning, making supper and coordinating the customers each night. It was known as being a prime job in town.

To show you how fast the women left, there was a bag of groceries left on the kitchen counter, peeling with age, revealed its contents: Minute Rice, egg noodles, and Campbell’s soup. The kitchen itself looked about half the size that you would find on a train. There didn’t seem to be much eating that went on as there was only one small table in the break room, not really big enough for everyone to eat at.

This was a very interesting tour and definitely gives you a realistic view of what life was like back in the late eighties.

After touring the museum we walked around town for a bit and then decided to go for supper at the local barbecue restaurant. Out on the street they have a smoker that is cooking all day long. We started off with an appetizer sampler which had pork ribs, chicken and beef brisket. It was amazing. Len had a rib platter with macaroni/cheese and coleslaw sides and I had the beef brisket with red beans and rice and macaroni and cheese. The food was fantastic; I would definitely recommend this to anyone who goes to Wallace.

After supper we headed back to the motor home to give Lindy her supper and relax.

August 26, Kellogg and Wardner, Idaho

Today we decided to head to Kellogg, there was a number of geocaches in the area and since we hadn’t done that many in the last couple of days we would see what we could find. Kellogg is a mining town that unfortunately fallen on hard times. For one hundred years, the Bunker Hill mine and smelter was known world wide as a leader in its field. Then with hardly any notice the Bunker Hill shut it's mine and smelter down, throwing thousands of men out of work. In order to revitalize itself the town, adopted an Alpine theme and built a gondola to the top of the Jack Ass Ski Bowl, renamed it Silver Mountain; changed Jack Ass Gulch to Jacob's Gulch and suddenly a new industry was built, unfortunately tourism has not seemed to be a profitable as the mining and there were a lot of empty store fronts down town Kellogg, the only business in town that seems to be thriving is Dave Smith Auto and the local thrift store. There is a large number of geocaches located throughout Kellogg, magnetized to large piece of mining equipment. Sometimes these micros are easy to find and other they are very difficult. We did find all of them. After exploring what was left of the town we checked how much it would be to go up the mountain on the gondola and at $40 per person we decided that was a bit expensive, so instead we headed up a logging road to do a geocaches overlooking the valley from a satellite station.

As we headed back down we stopped in the little town of Wardner, Idaho. We parked in front of the town hall and as I was trying to get organized and getting Lindy secured in the Jeep, I told Len that the cache was over by the little general store. As he was walking that direction a gentleman came out of the general store to say hello. He said that his name was Chuck Peterson and he was the owner of the general store and the little museum beside it. He also knew where the cache was because it was his friend who had hid it on this property. After we found the cache Chuck invited us into his general store, told us a few stories and then invited us for a private tour of his next door museum. He was a very interesting man to talk to and his collections were quite fun to look at. He even had his own coffin that was used as a wishing well. One of his stories was how the town of Kellogg got it’s name.

It happened in 1885. A gentleman by the name of Noah Kellogg, a gold prospector and carpenter, lived in the Town of Murray which is 20 miles northeast as the crow flies. Being a gold prospector down on his luck, he ran around the Town of Murray looking for someone to give him a grubstake. He finally ran into two business men, Mr. Peck and Mr. Cooper, who loaned him enough money to buy grub and they loaned him a jackass (burro) to carry the tools. He started down the great north fork of the Coeur d'Alene River, came onto a trail and headed south over the mountains. Coming out on the south fork of the Coeur d'Alene River, he crossed it and went further on south up Milo Gulch and ended up about 1,000 yards above the present City Hall of Wardner. There he made camp, ate and went to sleep, and during the night, the jackass wandered off. In the morning he got up looking around for the stupid animal and hearing him braying, spotted him way up high on the hillside. Where the animal was standing he saw the sunshine glittering on something which turned out to be a large outcropping of galena (lead ore). And that was the discovery of the great Bunker Hill and Sullivan mines on September 4, 1885.

He then told us how Wardner got its name, because of a gentleman by the name of James Wardner. He was an entrepreneur and he'd do anything for a quick buck. He operated a grocery store in the Town of Murray and when he heard about this great strike, he threw a couple of bottles of whiskey in the saddlebag, jumped on his horse and headed down the great north fork of the Coeur d'Alene River, over the mountains and across the south fork of the Coeur d'Alene River and headed up Milo Creek. He got to the mining camp with Kellogg and O'Rourke, drank up the whiskey and then asked if he could borrow a hatchet. Feeling so good from drinking all the whiskey, they would give him anything. He took the hatchet and went out of the camp, walked around the valley for a few hours blazing trees, went back to camp and Noah and O'Rourke asked if he had staked a claim. He boldly said, "Yes. I just staked out the water rights for this valley." Noah Kellogg and O'Rourke knew they had been had and took Jim in as a partner.

In 1900, Jim Wardner sold out his interest for $100.000.00 and went to Seattle, Washington. He purchased an island by the name of Eliza, imported black cats and went to the Seattle people and asked if he could have their stray black cats. They were overjoyed to get rid of the strays. He took them to the island, raised them and then he would kill them and took the hides and sold them to Easterners for $2.00 each. The Easterners were buying them like crazy and making fur coats and hats. Jim was doing a fantastic business because he called them "hood seal" fur. When the Seattle people found out he was feeding cats to cats, and that is known as "catabolism", they shut him down. Then he went to Fairhaven, Washington, started a banking business, water company and a logging company and then he built himself a castle. The castle still stands today and they've made a bed and breakfast out of it. He entrepreneured some more, lost his castle and his money. Then he went to Canada and started mining and logging and they named a town in Canada after him; Wardner, B.C.

We then told Chuck that we knew where Wardner, BC was since we were from Canada and from the Kootenays. He then showed us some pictures of a group of people from Idaho who took a street trolley and went to Wardner, BC to help them celebrate their 100 anniversary.

So after getting a copy of Chuck’s history book and thanking him for the wonderful stories and the tour of his museum we head back down the road to Kellogg and then back to Osborne and the motor home. It was a very full day. Time for another movie and then early to bed.

August 26, Wallace Idaho

Today we got up early and we headed from Missoula towards Idaho. I had looked up on the Internet and there weren’t any RV parks in Wallace, so I looked in Kellogg but there wasn’t much to choose from there either, but I did find a Good Sam park in Osborne, Idaho which is halfway between Wallace and Kellogg. It was a nice little park, with pull through sites, clean showers and full hook-ups. We got all set up and then decided to head into Wallace to check out the town.

We found a tour of the local Sierra Silver Mine and unfortunately they would not let us take the dog, so we decided to see if Lindy could be trusted by herself in the motor home. So we took her back to the campsite, turned the air conditioner on and closed all the blinds and left here a big bowl of water. We then headed back into Wallace to check out the mine. The tour begins at the ticket office when you board a trolley. On the trip to and from the mine the driver tells you some of the history of Wallace and points out many of the historic buildings. The entire City of Wallace is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Once you got to the mine we were each fitted with a hard hat and got our picture taken. Our guide was a retired miner who starts off with a brief overview of the fundamentals of hard-rock mining. The tour itself is about 1000 feet through a U shaped tunnel that is actually quite roomy, the surface is smooth, there are no ups or downs or tight spaces. The Sierra Mine was discovered around 1900; unfortunately the ore bodies were never very rich, with only about ½ oz of silver per ton of ore assayed. The ownership of the mine changed hands many times and wasn’t really worked until around the early 1960’s when an incline shaft was sunk that ran a drift for about 100 feet. The miners ran out of money and work halted again. A few years later another mine ran a drift two hundred feet below the mine and hit a very rich vein of ore, just another example of a near miss in mining history. The mine remained idle until it was decided to use it as classroom to teach local high school students mining skills.

There were some great demos of how the various mining equipment worked, they were vary noisy and fun to watch. The tour guide was a retired miner who decided that it was safer and paid almost as well to do the tours instead of continuing mining. After the mine tour we headed we all got back on the Trolley and headed back towards town. The driver then took us on a tour around town and pointed out some of the historical buildings. The train depot is very cool they actually moved the entire building when they built the interstate. They have a movie of the move in the local museum.

When we got back to the Trolley Depot we were treated to a melodrama about Ed Pulaski. Pulaski is a local hero who on August 20, 1910, was credited with saving all but five of his 45-man crew during what is known as the "Great Idaho Fire. It had been unusually dry that year and about five miles south of Wallace, a fire suddenly broke out of control, overwhelming the crew, because of his knowledge of the area and of the dynamics of forest fires, Pulaski led his men to safety in an abandoned prospect mine. After ordering his crew into an abandoned mine tunnel, he threatened to shoot with his pistol any man who left, all but five of the firefighters survived, but two horses with them died from smoke inhalation. The US Forest Service's Pulaski Tunnel Trail near Wallace, ID, provides access to the Nicholson Mine site where Pulaski and his team took shelter.

Ed Pulaski is also credited for the invention of the Pulaski in 1911, a hand tool commonly used in wild land firefighting; it is a combination hand tool with a mattock for digging or grubbing on one side and an axe for chopping on the other.

So now it was time to head back to the campsite and check on Lindy. When we got back there was a fellow camper sitting outside so we checked with him to see if he had heard anything coming from the motor home. He told us no and said that he had just recently notice a small little head poking out from the bottom of the blind, but that she hadn’t barked or anything. So that was good to hear. It does make it a little easier to go to place now that we know that we can leave her from short periods of time. Especially if we are somewhere that we can turn on the air conditioner so that she is comfortable. So we had a good supper, watched a movie and then off to bed.

August 25 Missoula

We did a bit more exploring around Missoula today but nothing that really stands out. Did a bit of shopping but pretty much we just lazed around the campsite and read a few more books. Today we met a couple that was camped beside us. He was a truck driver that used to come through Kingsgate and he recognized me from there. They were in town to get their daughter enrolled in University. We decided to head to Wallace in the next morning, and head home a day early so that we could get unpacked and do laundry before we both had to go to work.