July 26-28

St Regis, MT and Wallace, ID

We spent the night in St. Regis, MT.  No fish!  While Steve was wetting a line I picked wild Huckleberrys.  We had a slice of huckleberry pie in Glacier so I knew what to look for when picking.

The next morning I made Huckleberry pancakes for breakfast.  Yummy.....

We left St. Regis, traveled 40 miles to Wallace, ID, and got here in time for the Nascar race.  Sometime between turning the TV off Sat night and turning it on again Sunday morning we lost the ability to control the volume.  The darn thing is stuck a little over 50%.  This is way to loud and gets annoying, but it is better than not hearing it at all.  We have an appt in Spokane to get it looked at.

Wallace is an interesting little town.  It is a mining town with lots of history.  The last Bordello was in operation until 1988.  There were 6 girls plus the Madame.  The girls could service up to 40 customers a days, 7 days a week for 3 weeks with 1 week off.  They also only worked in Wallace for 6 months and then they had to move on.  The girls got a 60/40 split, their take was the 60 and the Madame got 40.  The cost was a minimum of $15 for 8 minutes and of course there were a number of services available at different costs.  I just had to have an apron from there with the full menu printed on it.

We toured the Sierra Silver Mine.   It was a busted mine that was finally converted to a working class room where students who wanted to be miners could learn about mining, get their high school diploma and were guaranteed a job in the mine after high school.   The money was better'n any white color steady job. The tour guide has worked in the mines for 40 years and was pretty informative. The mines had over 200 miles of tunnels. Amazing

At one time Wallace had more millionaires per capata than any other place.

We have met some great people on the road.  Just met a couple that retired from their jobs in the Cleveland, Ohio area, sold their home and bought a 45 ft. King Aire and a 2 door Rubicon.  They are on a grand adventure with an eye out for where they want to finally settle some day.

July 24-25

Glacier National Park

Crooked Tree RV Park
Hungry Horse

We spent 2 days at Glacier. It is absolutely beautiful.  We stayed on the West Glacier side of the park but decided to drive to East Glacier to start our trek across the Road to the Sun.  This may not have been our best idea as they were doing road work and we were stopped a couple of times for about 30 minutes each time.  Oh well, it was a spectular drive.

Everywhere were water falls and the glaciers even though they are shrinking are still amazing.  What a great example of Mother Nature.

We found a distillery in Coram, just South of West Glacier so stopped to see what it was all about. They have some interesting locally made whiskey, gin, vodka, brandy and gruppa.  Steve bought a bottle of whiskey, FireWeed, which is a blend of rye whiskey and cherry brandy.  He says it is tasty.

We went to the Hungry Horse Dam in Hungry Horse of course.  This was quite a task building this 564 high, 2100+ wide dam on the Flathead River.  It took 6 years to build and 2 years prior to that to build the access road to it.  It is the 11th highest dam and produces about 1 billion kilowatt hours annually.  Pretty amazing!

The only down side to our stay in Glacier was that we could not get any TV so we had to talk to each other.  Wow, not sure we can take too much of that. :)

Off to Idaho tomorrow.

Jackson Glacier

Whiskey Barn

Hungry Horse Dam

July 20, 21, 22, 23

Henry's Lake, Idaho

We arrived around 1:00 at Henry's Lake State Park. Got set up and headed out to buy an Idaho Fishing License. Got the license and drove to the other side of the lake to the Wild Rose Resort and checked on renting a boat for the next day.  All of the necessary stuff taken care of we headed back to the motor home for a relaxing evening.

Monday morning found us in an aluminum boat trolling for Henry's Lake famous fish. 7 hours later we were done on the lake.  It was cloudy, a few sprinkles and very windy and of course we did not even get a bite. Steve tried every lure he owns and we got nothing.

We got back to the motor home in time for the sky's to open up. We spent the next hours with rain, hail, wind, thunder and lightening. We were glad to be inside and not still out on the lake.

Tuesday morning the sky was clear and the lake fairly calm.  We fished from the bank for a couple of hours and then headed out to look for a stream to fish in. We found every side road around the area but we could not get to the river. We finally stopped at the TroutHunter Resort for lunch and checked out the river for fishing options. We still could not get a good place to fish so headed back to the motor home. We fished a couple of hours from the bank of the lake but finally called it a day.

This morning we wet our lines from the bank, but it was so windy that we gave up.  Needless to say fishing at Henry's was not a success. Steve says he caught himself, me, weeds, moss, sticks, everything but a darn fish.

Steve did try fly fishing on the river and on the lake.  He is beginning to get the hang of it, but the brush on the bank of the river won.

We left Henry's and are now in Butte MT.  We took Hwy 287 through Ennis, Virginia City and up to I-90.  The little towns would have been fun to stop and look around in, but we were too early for anything to be open. Oh well, next time.

We checked out the Berkeley Pit Viewing Stand here in Butte. The Cooper mining operation is huge and we found this very interesting.

we learned that there are 10,000 miles of tunnels in this mine alone.  Also, this mine is about 1 mile deep.  Amazing.  They were mining 30,000 tons of ore a day at it's hey day.  At least that is what we were told.

July 18-19

It is Friday and we are headed to ATK (formly Morton Thiokol), to see the Rocket Display.

From ATK we did a road trip to look at the terrain and see if we could find a hunting outfitter in the Grouse Creek area. We drove about 300 miles round trip and did not find the outfitter cause after a detour almost into Nevada we were running low on gas so turned around.  When we filled up before starting our adventure we didn't even think to fill our extra gas tank that we carry with us.

Today, Saturday, we went out to the Golden Spike National Historical Site for a re-enactment of the driving of the last spike to connect the East and West railroad tracks.  It was very interesting and we had a good time. We were there about 30 years ago before the road was paved and always said we would go back.

July 16-17

Wednesday morning we were at the shoreline with our lines wet before 8 am.  It was windy and we were fish less. Didn't seem to bother the family of five down from us a ways that was pulling in fish like gang busters. We took a break about 1 pm and went back to the motorhome for a couple of hours. While we were at the motorhome Steve checked out the internet for what color power bait we should be using since green sparkly was not working. Also Steve tried every lure in his bag of tricks and they didn't work either. He found a new tie up for the weight and hook and decided we should take a trip to the marina store for some other power bait colors, so off we went.

2:30ish found us on our way back to our fishing spot. I got a really good bite but no fish. Went home tired, hungry and no fish.

Decided that we needed to be fishing earlier this morning so we were out with wet lines by 6 am. I told Steve the fish would not be awake yet, but there we were anyway.  Steve got 2 good bites within the hour, but they escaped and he lost his setup both times. Bad spot to fish. He moved down the bank a few feet and in the next hour had one great rainbow trout. We went back to the motorhome about 10 and got ready to leave for our next destination.

Rainbow Trout Strawberry Reservoir

Cooked Trout - Dinner

The trout was delicious. Would have been better if I had caught it...HA

We are now in Brigham City for the next 3 nights. 

We're Off

July 15, 2014

We're Off!

Left home at 7:30 a.m.  We had an uneventful trip with the weather and wind cooperating.

Arrived at Strawberry Reservoir at 2:00 p.m.  We had our lines in the water by 2:30. Unfortunately we are not having trout for dinner.  Maybe tomorrow.

We took a drive around the reservoir and scoped out our fishing area for tomorrow. While driving around we saw some beautiful deer and one antelope

Strawberry Reservoir

Strawberry Reservoir

Strawberry Reservoir Sunset

It is time to get serious about our new Adventure.  We have finally decided on the day we will be leaving Dammeron Valley headed to Whidbey Island (Seattle).  

July 15th we will be headed to Strawberry Reservoir in Utah.  We will be doing some fishing while there.  We leave on July 17th for Brigham City where we will spend the next 3 nights.  We will visit the Golden Spike National Historic Site and attend the Reenactment at the Park.  Apparently in the same area is the ATK Thiokol Plant which is open to the public for viewing the Rockets.  Now I know Steve would enjoy this, so I can't imagine not doing this tour.  Guess we will find out what else is there to see and do.

July 20th will have us in the Motorhome headed into Idaho with a final destination of Henry's Lake, but what day we will actually get there is up in the air.