The Wild Brown Yonder (2012), Part 3

I'm vaguely uneasy at still blogging about a trip we took in 2012, but then I still have at least one more post to put together before the account is complete.  It's not for lack of interest or enthusiasm for the subject.  This was a terrific trip.

My trajectory for the start of this trip involved a familiar emphasis on obscure routes, preferably previously untraveled by us, exploiting the time available prior to our reservation in Enterprise, Oregon.  A primary goal was to correct an oversight in our drive last year via Grand Coulee country on the way to Penticton, BC.  On that trip we obliviously passed the unassuming little town of Nespelem on the Colville Indian Reservation.  It was only in the aftermath that I learned this is the final resting place of the younger Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces.  He was a principal leader during the late 1870's fighting that was one of the last major armed conflicts between incoming Europeans and Native North Americans. After years of increasingly heated conflict, the major armed hostilities flared at White Bird, Idaho and eventually led to the remarkable strategic NP attempt to evade capture via Lolo Pass, Big Hole, and Yellowstone.  Since we have been at times purposely (and other times fortuitously) tracking and crossing paths with the Nez Perces in our travels around the Pacific NW off and on now for years, tracking down the actual grave-site felt important to me.

We also put paid to a long-awaited milestone via the Park Service office near that amazing dam, collecting our Golden Eagle Pass.  A sawbuck for free perpetual National Park entry seems a mighty sweet deal.

As it happened, the repeat drive to Nespelem, though done so recently, seemed surprisingly new.  But then we were this time on an actual exploratory mission in the area and hence on the alert rather than just eager to make it to Omak.  How much we see often seems to relate remarkably closely to how actively we look, no?



Predictably, finding Chief Joseph's gravesite was no easy matter and distinctly melancholy.  For one thing, repeated groveling for directions first led us many miles out of town, followed by random search.  Although Joseph is memorialized at a modest rest-facility just off the highway, the gravesite itself is apparently not much of a feature to the townfolk of admittedly a different tribe entirely and the only form of embellishment at the actual site turned out to be a larger-than-average monument. I found no meaningful signage in town or even at the final turnoff to the cemetery.  But after some on-foot stumbling around it was a great relief and quite moving to finally locate a definitive marker.  It would have distressed me to go on without.

While I was at my planning, tracking down out-of-the-way obscurities to entertain us (or at least me) on our circuitous roundabout way to the Wallowas, I came upon the need to get us across the mighty Columbia heading east and north of Grand Coulee, and came upon the Inchelium-Gifford ferry.  The deal was sealed when I learned that the ferry in question was constructed at the Fisherman's Boat Shop in Everett, the predecessor to one of my recent clients.  The fact that the passage was free was just a bonus.

Aside: In the trip aftermath, intrigued with the interesting town name, I learned that there is an heirloom garlic that carries the name Inchelium as a result of having been rediscovered on the Colville reservation a good while back.  It is apparently a quite-admired variety.  I was pleased to track some down at the Ballard Farmer's Market after our trip and recently harvested my first crop.

We made our way across the Spokane River at Little Falls, me wowed by the scenery and thinking there was a good deal more exploring needed in this locale but feeling the imperative to make tracks.  "We" were improvising on our route at this point, aiming to get to the Coeur d'Alene locale for the night given our reservation for the following two nights way up near the Canadian Border in Bonner's Ferry, new territory for us.  We gingerly stuck our nose into the Coeur d'Alene Resort but backed quickly away when the most "economical" room they had was $600 or so.  Not sure I want to know what-all came with that room; we were looking for a comfortable bed and a shower!

Aside from several passages up and down major arterials, dodging what seemed like a lot of tourist and or local traffic, there was little that seemed memorable about this night.  We did track down a fabric store or two (Vacation Quality Objective [VQO] #3, check!).  The next morn I was reminded that another major trip motif was the daily Starbuck's search (VQO #2! - see trip post #1)  obo Ms. Gumbo in particular.  In this case we backtracked into town since there had been an earlier sighting, delaying our departure for points north by an hour or so.  But, hey, we're on vacation!

I later recalled that a portion of this trip to the northernmost part of the Idaho panhandle did repeat in reverse our return from a trip to Montana.  That time we had followed a good bit of the course of the very same Ice Age Floods that involved mega-impoundments of water in western Montana repeatedly breaking through ice-sheet blockages, tearing across Idaho, and eventually ravaging major parts of eastern Washington and producing features like the desolate scablands and Grand Coulee.

But mostly this was new territory to us, and so fabulously scenic as to be well worth a repeat.

I confess I could not entirely quell the little voice reminding me that this area, Hayden Lake in particular, was also the original home ground of the Aryan Nations white supremacist cult.  Obviously not an endearing connection.  And while virtually all of our human contacts in Northern Idaho were quite congenial, there is no denying that in terms of ethnic diversity this area contrasts rather strikingly with our general metro home turf.

On the way north we passed a major amusement park, Silverwood I believe, that I'd never even heard of.  Plunked down in the middle of to-me semi-nowhere, this was quite a surprise.

We greatly enjoyed our short stay in Bonner's Ferry, a small town with a lot of character.  We made a generous contribution to the local fabric store and restaurant economies and enjoyed a lonesome circuit drive in the vicinity that nearly inadvertently took us into Canada.

Pretty wild and wonderfully uncrowded country.  I imagine winter conditions might be a little more daunting, but the vistas and scenery in summer certainly could bring me back.