August has been a month of travel for us. It started the first week when we took a week long trip driving north to discover some Idaho history. We took a similar trip a couple years ago when Bailee was going into fourth grade. That time we went east. That trip was more about the Oregon trail and the pioneers that followed it. This trip was more about Lewis and Clark and about the Native Americans that they encountered.
So I have lots of pictures, but I don't have pictures of everything we did. I guess I was too busy learning.
The first day we headed out to find Map Rock. We never did find it. It took us 3.5 hours and 45 u-turns to give up. We even stopped to ask for directions and were told that we couldn't miss it. Yeah, right. So anyways, we decided to just move on. We took Hwy 12 which follows the path that Lewis and Clark took on their journey to the Pacific. We made many stops that day, but apparently I only took pictures of one of those stops. This was Canoe Camp. It is where Lewis and Clark built the canoes that would take them to the Pacific Ocean. I had never realized just how long those canoes were.
That night we camped at Hells Gate State Park in Lewiston. This was my tent buddy for the night. She looked so peaceful that I had to take a picture. She slept much better than I did.
On Tuesday, we went to a couple museums/discovery centers and learned more about Lewis and Clark's journey. We made a stop to see this statue, and I honestly can't remember what it is called. Ha! It was so disappointing after seeing the pictures of it. The pictures made it look much more glorious.
This was where we stopped to eat lunch. It was really pretty there.
We drove on a long dirt road to see Dent Bridge. It was really a cool looking bridge. I couldn't tell you the history behind it because I've forgotten already, but it was a pretty drive to get there.
The following picture was taken sometime that day by my mother. It was a surprise waiting for me on my phone.
We followed that dirt road to a spot where we could hike to see Elk Creek Falls. This was such a pretty hike! The trees were so tall.
That night we camped in Hayden State Park. This was the best campground of our trip. We stayed there for three days. Our campsite overlooked the lake, and every night we got to see the moon shining on that lake. It was so bright!
This was the first camping trip that I let the girls poke a the fire with sticks. They thought it was so cool.
And then on Wednesday, this happened.
I seriously have the worst luck with cars and road trips. I just can't seem to catch a break! We were sitting in construction traffic about 30 miles outside of St Maries, and I just happened to look down at my temperature guage and see that it was moving up rather quickly. I told mom that I thought that we should pull over and then I told her we needed to pull over right now! If the car was going to break down, it picked a good place to do it. I was able to pull into a campground at the side of the road that had bathrooms and even a shower if we needed it! We didn't have any cell service, so I walked across the street to a house to find out if there was a phone there. I met a very nice old man who didn't have a phone but offered to give me a ride to the nearest gas station which happened to be about a half mile away. I know, I know. Riding in the car with a strange man is not the best idea, but I really didn't feel like I had a lot of options at this point. The attendant there let me use his phone and recommended a shop. We were able to be towed back to St Maries where we found out the the module on the radiator that controls the cooling fan had quit working which caused the engine to overheat. It had already dumped the coolant, so we were very lucky that we stopped when we did. Unfortunately, the mechanic wasn't going to be able to get the part for us for almost a week and that was if we were lucky. But he was able to come up with a work around that connected the cooling fan directly to the battery. We just had to connect and disconnect it every time we went anywhere. After checking with Ben and Dad, we decided to continue on our trip - Mom a bit more enthusiastically than I. But that day was shot, so we just spent the day at the campground.
Thursday we headed to see the oldest building in Idaho. It is the Sacred Heart Mission in Old Mission State Park. I love looking at old buildings like this. There's something about being able to go into them that really transports you back in time.
We left there to go check out a gold mine. The girls loved this one. We panned for gold and then we put on hard hats and headed to the gold mine. We were able to see the gold and other precious metals still in the rock. Very interesting. The girls were disappointed that they didn't find any gold when they panned. Morgan might have cried.
Mom had the girls fill out a little sheet each day about what we had seen and what their favorite part had been. Bailee was not amused by this.
On Friday, we went to the Nez Perce National Park Spaulding Visitors Center (I think that's what it was called). We learned a lot about the Nez Perce here, and the girls completed the Junior Ranger Program which they thought was a lot of fun. This one also had some old buildings to check out. This was the Presbyterian mission that Henry Spaulding built.
We ended Friday in Cascade. That was not a good experience. Let's just say that our camping neighbors were drunk, using the tree (that was not surrounded by other trees) as their bathroom, and using very foul language. Mom asked them (nicely) if they could please quite it down a bit since it was 10:30 pm and we had little girls in our tent, but this only made them louder and more horrible. We put in ear plugs, and in the morning mom talked to the camp host. He promised to have the park ranger patrol that night. Well, when Dad got there, he asked the camp host if we could move to a different campsite. I found out later that he was ready to pack us up and move us to a totally different campground. The camp host was able to move us across the way to a quieter and actually much nicer spot. So our last evening was much nicer.
On Saturday afternoon after the guys arrived, we went to the Huckleberry Festival in Donnelly. The girls enjoyed their huckleberry lemonade while we walked around looking at all the different booths.
On Sunday we went to church in McCall and then spent the afternoon playing in the lake there. It was a great way to end a week long trip.
Then we came home for 5 days and got ready for our next trip. But that's a different post. :)
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