State of Wilderness

Going-To-The-Sun

There are roads, and then there are ROADS. On every road trip, there should be at least one of these epic roads that one has to travel.
At least, that is the rule that Jason and I live by. For us, in 2010, Beartooth Pass was THAT road, a road so epic that it was the destination itself, not the several national parks we stopped at on the way there and back. In 2012, the steep curves and sharp vistas of the Road to Paradise in Mt Rainier NP, and one could argue even the Tioga Pass that took us into Yosemite, were those roads. In this journey, the road trip of the summer of 2014, the epic road was Going-To-The-Sun, the fifty mile main artery of Glacier National Park.

This was probably the most anticipated of any of the epic roads we had traveled, as well. I had been dreaming about this road for years, maybe two to four. I had bookmarked the virtual geocache stops along it, traced it with the mouse cursor, showed Jason videos on YouTube of other people driving it, and plotted where we were going to stop and what we were going to do there. The names given to the various points thrilled me: Weeping Wall, The Loop, Siyeh Bend, Sun Point.

What I didn’t plan on, during all this anticipation, was how I would feel if weather rained, or in this case burned, on my dreams of stunning mountain views. There were wildfires in the neighboring states all around us during this ONE particular day that we finally made our way there. Smoke drifted for hundreds of miles and left a dark mist all over Glacier NP on July 18 of this year. It was a lesson for me in how to handle disappointment, that is for sure.

I wasn’t the only one, either. That night, when we made it to our campsite, I talked to a fellow traveler who came to the park from New York in an RV with her husband, and she said her husband was so pissed off about it that he wanted to pull up stakes and leave, now, even though they had driven for days to get here and meant to spend three days in the park. We meant to spend three days in the park, too, and luckily, by the next day, the smoke had moved out of the area and we were able to enjoy the views. We drove halfway back up Going-To-The-Sun and back to get to Logan Pass to go hiking, and it all worked out in the end. That first day, though, I had a hard time letting go of that lump of frustration that something I worked and saved so hard to be able to see was just covered up by a haze.

Here are some of the pictures that we did get along the way, all taken with my cell phone. Jason didn’t even bother to get his camera out of the car. The road itself was not without its adventures, though, despite the smoke. Making our way past the dripping Weeping Wall was fun, as well as the twists around Big Bend and some of the smaller bends. The road got narrow, and there was enough snow and ice to keep things interesting. We did have lunch at Lake McDonald Lodge like I planned, but it was so late it was really more like an early dinner.

We decided to splurge and eat in Russell’s Fireside Dining Room, although in retrospect, I think I would have been happier just buying sandwiches from the deli mart and sitting by the shore to eat and watch the birds. We walked up to the lake and identified answers to the virtual geocache there, marveling at the pink and gray rocks in the water. We stopped at a few viewpoints along the way, taking pictures to also claim those finds, and then took a short walk along the Trail of the Cedars.
The forest there was interesting enough to deserve its own post, so look for the pictures in the next entry.

A parting picture:

Hunt Falls

Priest Lake, Idaho
July 18, 2014

In the morning after camping in the Indian Creek section of Priest Lake, we decided on one more diversion before leaving the area. There was another geocache I had cherry-picked in the area called the Hunt Falls Cache. The reason this one was special was because of the hide date: 6/25/2001. I’ve been working on the Jasmer Challenge, which involves finding a cache hidden in every month/year combination, and I was missing a few, including this combination. Now I am only missing January of 2001 hides, so if you know of any, please let me know. I haven’t been able to locate any of these closer than Tennessee, and who knows when we will be traveling there!

Another reason this one is special is because it, like the Camels Prairie Stash, was hidden by Moun10Bike, a famous cacher. One of Moun10Bike’s claims to fame is that he created the very first geocoin. Also, though, he is an actual “lackey” working at the “lily pad”: he actually works for Groundspeak, the company that brings us www.geocaching.com. He is also a Charter Member of geocaching.com, as I mentioned in the last post, and has been a member since Sept 2000, right at the beginning of this game. All of these give him revered status in the community.
Also, this cache has 15 favorite points, and leads to a beautiful hidden waterfall. Some logs state that this is exactly what geocaching is supposed to be about, and we love those kind of hides.

The reasons why this cache is one of my favorites now includes all of those things above, plus the experience we had with it. It turns out that logging road #23 was the road we were first on the night before, so the initial drive up, we had actually done before. Instead of continuing up the hill, though, we turned to the left and looped around, parking the car near where a walking path opened up along the creek. The banks along this path were covered with several different kinds of moss and ferns, as you can see in one of the above pictures, and this is an aspect of nature that thrills me to no end. I wished I could harvest some of this moss to make terrariums out of, but I didn’t think there was a way I could get it back to Texas alive. We were completely alone out here; no one else was traveling these roads or paths. We even split up from each other a little. Jason stopped to take pictures and I continued on the little footpath that lead off to the right of the waterfall, once we got there, to go find the ammo can that was well hidden under piles of moss. We were still very much in the wilderness that we were in last night, with the thrill of running into bear or moose at any moment adding the edge of excitement to the hunt.

On the way back, I was by myself for bit, and stopped in a clearing just off the trail. As I looked around, taking it all in, something whizzed past me and then stopped, hovering, and stared right at me. It was a hummingbird, and he was either extremely curious about me, or wanted me gone. I had never been stared down by a bird before, and I took notice of his coloring before he flew off. I looked up which species this was after, and it had to be the Rufous Hummingbird. Apparently these little guys are quite territorial and don’t mind trying to even scare humans off of their areas. That was a special birding treat for me, since as far as I know, I have never seen one of these before or since.

This stop was worth the half hour to an hour side trip, but then it was time to actually start making our way to Montana. We made our way south to Highway 2, then headed east. The road curved up at Sandpoint north to Bonners Ferry, then crossed into Montana. Neither of us remember if we had breakfast before we left the campground – if so, it was probably a bar or these dried breakfast pouches I had brought – so about mid-morning after we crossed the Montana border, I made us some ham and cheese croissant sandwiches that we ate as we walked to a cache maintained in memory of a fallen cacher. Our goal was to make it to the eastern edge of Glacier National Park by lunchtime, but there were slowdowns. Road construction, some kind of delays, a little bit of rain, frustration, and stopping for supplies in Kalispell lay in between. Next post, though: Going-to-the-Sun Road, and our first day in the park.

Camels Prairie Stash

Still Thursday, July 17.

As we left the logging roads that led us to Eggcellent, we headed north for another set of logging roads some 240 miles away in the panhandle. We took Elk River Road to Highway 3, a rural highway that cut north through more typical Idaho scenery: stubby brown hillsides, hay fields, farms, and roads that disappeared around the bends only to pick back up again.

We had a music crisis that had reached critical mass around this time, two weeks into the road. I had this idea that we were all going to take turns with our music. It turned out that Jason completely forgot about this idea…forgot about music completely actually, and didn’t have a single audio file loaded on his phone except two odd voice mails that we actually did listen to in our desperateness. I never thought I would see the day, but after twenty two years as a fan, I finally burned myself out on the Indigo Girls during this trip. I couldn’t handle my own music anymore, I was so over it, despite the bonus albums I had borrowed from the library to burn copies of (apparently all “hippy dippy shit”, according to Jason). We were listening to some of that this day – some odd Peter, Paul and Mary tracks that I had never really heard – but finally we had to kill that off and go for the one thing that kept us from driving each other crazy three weeks on the road – the audio book of the first Game of Thrones story, “A Song of Ice and Fire”. At thirty three hours long, it was the perfect road companion. We listened to this for a couple hours at a time almost every day of our trip this summer, and finally finished it off on the last stretch of road from Dallas to Houston.

We were starting to get hungry, but we didn’t drive through any real towns for quite a while on this stretch. Finally, around two pm, we reached Saint Maries, a little town that was apparently the site of a “Wobblies War” between unions and state/federal forces. Across the street from the historical marker describing this (also a virtual cache), we found respite in Bud’s Drive In, a greasy spoon offering great burgers and cool drinks. We had the friendliest waitress ever, who insisted on making us “Arnold Palmers” when we couldn’t decide if we wanted lemonade or iced tea, and insisted on making us to-go cups of it as we were leaving (even if I wasn’t quite convinced I liked it – it was really hard to say no to her enthusiastic spirit).

Speaking of spirit, pretty soon we were passing through Coeur D’Alene, then out into the watery and less inhabited regions of Idaho. This sign made me want to stop and stay a while at this place, but we were on a mission. Maybe next time.
We were heading north to Priest Lake State park, a campground just thirty miles from the Canadian border. The reason we were headed there was because this time, this year, I was going to find this particular “grandfather” cache: Camels Prairie Stash, which is hidden off the logging roads basically across the road from the park.

This is the oldest cache in Idaho, having a hide date of 6/17/2000. It has been found a little bit more often than the other ones we found on this day (about 150 times by the time we found it), despite the challenges in getting to it, and is owned by Moun10Bike, who is a Charter Member and legend in the geocaching world.

Mostly, I was in it for the view. I wanted to experience this exact moment that is in this picture from the cache page (not my pic). I love this picture:

This picture just seems to sum up what it is I am after in our adventures into the wild.

As I learned, it was not the right time of year for this photo…nor am I sure I want to actually be here when there is snow still on the ground. The way to this area was rough, and I felt a little more vulnerable out here than I anticipated (might have had something to do with the fresh bear scat we saw, and that others reported seeing in their logs). So we didn’t get THAT picture, but we did get this one, which I was happy with:

I wasn’t sure we were actually going to make the find on this one, to tell you the truth; at least not during this first evening’s attempt. It was a bit tricky to get to. When you look at a map of the area, you see little tendrils reaching out from the main road, indicated the various logging roads, but internet maps are not up to date with the changes these roads taken over seasons or years. Places that showed up as roads on the map were barricaded by gates, so overgrown beyond that to the point of being impassable even if the gates were open. Previous finders indicated the way was challenging, but did not leave hints on how to actually navigate these roads. It was like some conspiracy, one finder wrote, to leave out the critical information of the journey.

The ridiculous part about our attempt to get there was that I had already actually researched our approach, and came up with two “markers” in the way of other geocache hides that would indicate where the turns were that we needed to make. Jason took a look at the area, though, when we got there, and didn’t agree with my assessment. He is usually right, so I trusted him…but then we spent over an hour traversing a logging road that ended up taking us in the other direction, and we were running out of daylight. We decided we were going to have to give up for the night, but on the way out, we were both like, “but wait, what lies this way?” and took a left instead of the right that we would need to take to get out. After this, we ended up finding the way to those hides I had marked on the GPS unit, which took us right up to the turns we needed to make.

The last stretch of road was an uphill climb of about a mile and a quarter. The cache owner advised leaving the vehicle at the bottom of this hill unless you had a 4×4 vehicle, but Jason thought we could make it in the Subaru, and we were running out of daylight. I suspect that this road has changed in the fourteen years since this cache was hidden, though. There were deep ruts, like hills, that kept scraping the bottom of the vehicle as we went over them. We took some video of this as well, and hopefully I can find where Jason stored them soon. The videos got a little tense, though, and you could hear me cussing a little and telling him that maybe we should just stop, now. This was one of those rare instances where Jason is a lot more reckless than I wanted to be. I started making a plan for how we would deal with it if we ruined our vehicle and got stuck out here. In the end, he did finally stop the car, about 0.43 miles from the cache, and admitted he probably should have stopped it sooner. We were lucky in that all it cost us was a dented muffler and some “trail badges” of scraped paint.

We walked up the rest of the hill as quickly as we could, not wanting to get caught out here after dark. The entire time, I had the sense that there were animals out here watching us, but we didn’t see any. We took some photos, but not as many as I wanted, and did look out at the mountain/hills in the distance from look out points, but we didn’t waste a lot of time, and made a quick scramble back down the hill to the Subbie. I was amazed that we actually made the find after all that difficulty getting there, and it was really beautiful up there. Would do it again in a heartbeat.

We made camp late in the night. Still needing to come up with some dinner, I warmed up the remainder of the pasta I had made in Pocatello, and we scarfed it down in the darkness. I had to clean out the cooler at this part of the journey, and we walked to the dumpster under a night bright with stars and anticipation. Every once in a while when we are camping in the northwestern states, I have the feeling like I did at this place, like the world is so big and we are so small, and those stars just keep blinking under a sky that seems so much closer and the air so much sharper than it does back home in Texas. That is the feeling that I most remember about this campsite.

I would love to have spent some time sitting by the lake and looking for eagles or ospreys to fly over it looking for fish, but we didn’t have time to even stop to soak it all in. I always pack us too tight with adventures and missions and agendas, and the next morning was no different. We made a quick exit and drove out headed east, towards Montana and Glacier National Park. Next entry.

Our Eggcellent Adventure

Thursday, July 17.
We almost didn’t want to leave the comfort of the Konkoville Motel, but we were on a mission. After a cozy hotel breakfast of the most delicious muffins, possibly some fruit and cereal, coffee and milk, we finally pulled out and headed out to the Idaho wilderness.
We were searching one of the oldest active geocaches (of course), Eggcellent, hidden June 21, 2000. This was literally within a month of the game’s inception, and just a few weeks after the oldest cache hide. This one is REALLY off the beaten path…so much that it has only been found 47 times before us in the fourteen years that it has been sitting out here. I’ve been eyeballing it on the map for a while, though, and I thought, what is the next time we are going to be in Idaho…we should go for it while we were here. Plus, it was kind of a double shot kind of deal, because along the way, we could pick up a find on another grandfather cache, Two Roads. This one has been out the same amount of time, with almost three times as many finds. I guess that is the difference between a difficulty 3, terrain one/short walk versus a difficulty four/terrain four, the other difference being about two or three hours in the approach.

We had some discussion about the best way to approach Eggcellent. I had studied the maps and made a plan, but as usual, Jason looked at my plan really late in the game and decided to change it all. He didn’t think the route I picked would actually get us there, and so after some back and forth, he suggested we contact the cache owner, who was nice enough to write us back with some very specific directions. This was mostly helpful…although, when we got towards the end, things got a little hairy. In case you ever find yourself in the center of western Idaho, very close to the Washington border (nearest cities include Moscow, Lewiston, and Coeur D’Alene, although none of those are THAT close by), and you are wanting to find this cache, here are the directions the CO gave us. Be forewarned, though…you will need a vehicle that is capable of off-road, all wheel terrain and towards the end, you are going to have to trust your gut and use your spidey-senses to find the way to the cache. I am not even sure the last “road” is even a road? It is more like…tire tracks along a stretch of grass next to a wild, dark forest.

Hi. Here are some waypoints that will help with getting to Eggcellent: Turn off Hwy 8 onto NF1963 at: N46 45.837 W116 14.831. Turn on NF1445 at: N46 44.633 W116 15.974 Go Right at: N46 44.031 W116 14.330. Turn left on Rd at N46 42.518 W116 13.190. Right on Rd at N46 42.434 W116 12.957 Turn Left at N46 41.920 W116 12.694 (This road goes to ground zero. Stay on it till you get there. You will get real close and then seem to get further away but the road goes out and then comes right back to ground zero. As you drive to GZ, the cache was on our right. We actually stood on it several times while searching.)
There may be some gates closed and if there are, you will need to park and walk but the last cachers didn’t have any problem.

The initial entry into the forest made us really happy. The views were great and the road wasn’t too bad. We didn’t see anyone in the hours we were out here. We had smiles on our faces and were enjoying the flowers and the dark coolness of the woods. Each turn took us to a road that was a little smaller and a little rougher. When we reached the last turn, down the last road, we started to doubt whether or not this was actually the way. We ended up backing up and taking another right, which led us to an area that had been burnt out by logging operations. We turned right here by these flowers and parked the Subbie by the burn out spots, and then started walking down the road.

Now we come to the part of our adventure that we are still “arguing” about to this day. So, there was an animal in the woods just to the left of those flowers. A very, very big animal. I wanted to take a look at it. I am fairly certain that the creature making all the noise in the woods was exactly this here (NOT a picture we took. This one has been floating around the internet for some years):

Anyways, Jason wouldn’t let me go look and see. Instead, he grabbed two small logs, and began banging them together rhythmically, talking loudly, even singing a bit of a loud chant/song. The thing in the woods grew silent, and maybe disappeared, and with it went my chance to see a really awesome wild animal. It had to either be a moose or a bear, and all I wanted to do was look…maybe get a picture from a distance. I still feel a little bit cheated, but he says we are better safe than sorry.
After this, we walked down the road about a third of a mile, going around a corner and then finding the cache in the woods to our right, almost directly across the road from where the giant animal was walking. The whole walk, I kept expecting it to walk out in front of us, and it made me feel vulnerable and excited at the same time. It turns out we could have driven right up to the cache, and perhaps maybe even the road we were originally on would have gotten there from the opposite direction. Found it, though, and made it back to the parking area. Then, despite Jason’s caution about the wild animal, he had me stand right there by the flowers where we had first heard it moving around, by myself, and take videos of him driving the Subbie down the burned out hillside that we parked at. Hilarious.
We took lots of videos on the way out, and when I find them, I will upload them. This is something that we did a lot of in our 2010 road trip and haven’t done much of since, and it was fun to revisit this. For now, a lasting picture of the road out: