It was raining lightly when we got up on Saturday, so there were no walks.  The forecast was for clouds all day with a chance of showers.  Our first outing of the day was a drive to Costco to fill up on gas and wine and get something for meals at home.  They had the delicious huge Costco chicken pot pies so we bought one.  That will take care of our two nights eating in here (and then some).

In deciding what to do for the day, Elaine suggested that we visit a brothel museum in Wallace, ID.  I was skeptical since it was an hour’s drive away.  In the end we decided to do it.  It turned out to be a great decision.  So we heading out in Blue for the hour’s drive along I-90 (nice 75 mph speed limits most of the way).

Wallace (population 925) was and is a mining town located in Shoshone County.  It is on a 100-year run as the world’s largest silver producer, thus making it the richest mining town still in existence.  It is also the only town in America where every downtown building is on the National Register of Historic Places.  The town took the step of seeking this registration to prevent the Federal Government from constructing Interstate 90 right through the middle of town.  When it was planned and built back in the 1950’s, I-90 took heavy advantage of existing roads.  The city won after a 17-year battle and I-90 through Wallace continued to be on it’s original main street. . Wallace was famous as the having the only stoplight on I-90 from its beginning in Boston to its terminus in Seattle.  When the Feds finally constructed an viaduct around the town in 1991 to make I-90 bypass the town center, the citizens held a funeral for the stoplight that made national news.  Wallace is also the site of the Sunshine Mine disaster in 1972 in which over 80 miners were killed.  Finally, Wallace was the birthplace of Lana Turner .

We arrived in the pretty town at 11:30 am, so first order of business was lunch.  We chose the historic 1313 Club.  Inspired choice!  It was great.  The interior was like a museum.  I had a cup of posole and a great bacon cheeseburger; Elaine had a salmon burger with huckleberry sauce.  Everything was served with house made potato chips and everything was delicious.

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Then we had a nice walk about town snapping pictures and chatting with residents who are clearly very proud of their town (and rightly so).

Next on the agenda: a tour of an the Sierra Silver Mine.. There was no silver ever found at the Sierra, but a huge lode of silver was discovered just below where the Sierra owners gave up and halted operations.  Desperate for miners back in boom days (think Hunt Brothers cornering the market), the city converted the Sierra into a training center for the town’s high school seniors who wanted to become miners.  The center, which closed when silver dropped dramatically in price, was a huge success.  Now the Sierra is a unique mine tour where you go through the mine with an actual miner and actually see original mining tools in operation.  The miner also explains exactly what happened (fire) in the nearby Sunshine Mine back in 1972.  Alas, the picture of us at the mine entrance came out very blurry – blame the miner who took it.  Otherwise, he was a treat!

Next:  A visit to the Oasis Brothel Museum.  This is an actual brother, originally a small hotel, that was open legally and then illegally until 1988 when the FBI came to town to close it up.  Tipped off just before the agents raided, the madame and her employees hastily gathered up what they could and escaped before the raid began, leaving behind everything in the kitchen and most of their personal items in their rooms.  It was boarded up for years before being purchased by a local business man who turned it into the museum it is today.  Below are pictures from the first floor museum and shop.  Photographs were not allowed upstairs where the girls and their Madame lived.  It’s all very interesting!  Most of the final residents have returned to take the tour and were allowed to retrieve personal items.  Most took a few things but decided to leave most items to be part of the authentic museum.  Great fun here!

Finally we visited the old Northern Pacific Railroad Depot which is now a museum.  It has all sorts of railroad memorabilia including a working model railway.  But the gem of the museum was the Canadian man who comes down four times a year from Calgary to continue restoring the model railway.  He is 91 years old!  We were lucky to be here when he was here. The museum wasn’t busy and he chatted with us for a long time.  Turns out his original occupation was as a projectionist and he was the man who restored the projector in the Oasis Bordello museum.  He was fascinating; so fascinating that I missed getting key pictures.  Next time.

Long day!  Great day!  If you are ever in Idaho, don’t miss Wallace!  Then we drove home, had cocktails, chicken pot pie for dinner, and bed.

Tune in tomorrow.

Friday broke nice and sunny and stayed that way until clouds rolled in late in the day.  In the morning we walked (together for a change) from our Garden District carriage house to downtown CDA (as Coeur d’Alene is commonly referred to) and the lakefront.  Plenty of Mudgy Moose statues about – he’s CDA’s mascot.

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We stopped by and picked some local information at the Visitor Center.  Since it was a nice day we decided to take a drive north on route 95 (not interstate) to see Farragut State Park and the town of Sandpoint.  Sandpoint is about an hour north with the park in between.

Farragut State Park has a nice lake and lots of hiking trials but was, frankly, pretty boring.  The high point was just outside the park in a small town called Bayview where we stopped for lunch at Ralph’s.  Ralph’s is a nondescript little place with three tables where had the best burgers we have had in a long time.  And the homemade potato salad was outstanding.  I enjoyed mine with a delicious huckleberry frappe (milk shake to you non-Bostonians).

Then we drove on to Sandpoint which is a pretty little artist community on Lake Pend Oreille, Oregon’s largest.  It was pleasant but not really worth the hour ride.  You could drive on from there eastward along the lake on a supposedly very picturesque (but long) drive, but it was getting late and we chose to double back to CDA.

We had cocktails on our balcony (without the ocean view to which we have become accustomed) before heading to dinner at 315 Martinis and Tapas.  It’s a great little neighborhood eatery.  Good cocktails!  Great Caesar salad.  Elaine had delicious salmon and I had, amazingly, my first steak of the trip.  Everything, including the service, was excellent.  The wine was an Elk Cove Vineyards pinot noir from Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

Wednesday night we feasted on brats and beer.  Thursday morning we had last walkabouts in Leavenworth.  Elaine saw a deer close up.  I saw shop windows.

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At 9:00 am we left for the five hour drive east to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.  It was a pleasant drive on route 2 first along the Wenatchee River and then along the Columbia River.  This is serious fruit growing territory – grapes (and wineries and Washington peaches and apples.  We stopped at a lake and the Gehrke Windmill Garden for brief pictures and then motored on to Grand Coulee Dam.

I remember learning about Grand Coulee Dam in grade school back in the 1950’s.  It was a huge depression area WPA project under FDR.  The lake behind the dam is named Roosevelt Lake.  The dam is massive!  At the time it was built it was the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world.  It is still the largest in the USA.  The concrete in the dam could build a four-foot sidewalk around the Equator twice.  It could build a four lane highway from Seattle to Miami.  81 people died during construction, mostly from falls.  They have a great movie about the construction that we watched.  There are tours but we missed them.

We started a nice picnic in a picnic area in the shadow of the dam.  Like our last picnic, we were soon forced back to Blue, our trusty Nissan Rogue, as one bee, then another, then another, etc. arrived to enjoy the picnic.

Route 2 eventually merged in to I-90 (about 3,000 west of I-90 Mass Turnpike).  That took us through a busy Spokane, Washington and into Idaho.  Coeur d’Alene is just about 30 minutes east of Spokane.  We arrived at our condo rental in Coeur d’Alene’s garden district at about 5:00 pm after an obligatory stop at Safeway for some essentials for our five nights here.

The carriage house unit is beautiful, albeit without any interesting views.  It’s a 15-minute walk to Lake Coeur d’Alene.  We’ll check it out in the morning.  Good night for now.

 

Weather wise Tuesday & Wednesday were a perfect 10 from start to finish.  Long post tonight with lots of pictures.

Tuesday

We drove from Richland to Yakima for a stop at Costco for gas and wine.  Then on to Ellenburg with a stop along I-84 to view the Cascades in the distance from a viewpoint on I-82.

We stopped in Ellenburg mainly to grab some lunch.  So as we were driving donw the main street, Elaine noticed something and told me to circle back down a side street.  There at the corner of 1st and Pearl streets we found Dick and Jayne’s Spot.  Wow.  They actually live here.  You cannot go in, but the outside is a fantastic . . . . something.  Dick & Jane’s Spot is dedicated to the philosophy that “one hearty laugh is worth ten trips to the doctor.”   Pictures may not do it justice, but here they are:  Lunch was fantastic – a Taco Truck where we both had Super Burritos (mine with carne asada anbd Elaine’s with carne adovada; And Mexican Coca Cola made with real cane sugar)

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In Leavenworth we checked into the Bavarian Lodge form our two-night stay.  It’a a lovely hotel right in the center of town.  Our room is large with both a fireplace (gas) and balcony.

Leavenworth is an inspiring story about a town that reinvented itself.  When it lost its railway and timber industries, Leavenworth became a town in decline.  In the 1980’s it took the plunge to dedicate itself to tourism for the future.  With mountainous countryside resembling Bavaria in Germany, it remodeled itself as a Bavarian alpine village (think Garmisch or Berchesgaden)  Atter lots of research, changing building codes, and reconstruction, Leavenworth now looks the part.  Both businesses and residents have totally embraced the concept.  Houses look Bavarian.  Starbucks looks Bavarian.  McDonald’s looks Bavarian.  It’s now an upscale shopping and eating and drinking mecca.  Population is about 2,200.  It’s a very enjoyable place for a two-day visit.  And it has a nutcracker museum!

We stopped at an outdoor beer garden for some refreshments.

Dinner was at a good German restaurant, Andreas Keller, one of dozens in town, but this one is clearly the most popular.  Elaine had a delicious schnitzel with potato salad and I had a schnitzel cordon blue with spätzle.  All very yummy and authentic.  Oddly the house red wine, which we had, was from Bordeaux.  After dinner we had ice cream cones at Cold Stone Creamery (which, yes, looked Bavarian).

Wednesday

An Early Morning  Walk Around Leavenworth

A Drive to Tumwater Dam and Lake Wenatchee

The Nutcracker Museum

Thought you’d seen everything.  Here are over 7,000 nutcrackers and a 17 minute video on their history, all presided over by the mid-90’s collector and founder.  Their web page is here.

This post took forever to  upload.  Great hotel but slooooooow wi fi.  Tomorrow morning we leave for five nights in Couer d”Alene, Idaho.  Next post from there.

It’s 6:30 AM on Tuesday at the Marriott Town Place in Richland, Washington.  Here’s what happened since last post:

We left at 8:30 AM Monday morning on a six hour drive (not including stops) to Richland where we are now.  Basically, east to Salem, north to Portland (I-5) and east to Richland (mostly I-84 along the Columbia River.  A couple of years back we did the big sites including Vista House and Multnomah Falls which are pretty close to Portland, so we skipped that portion of historic route 30.  You can revisit that post here.

.We made a stop at Mitchell Point overlook for some pictures.  Then we crossed from the Oregon side of the very wide Columbia to the Washington side over a bridge at Hood River.  Scary bridge!  Very narrow.  The whole length is made up of those corrugated see-thru steel plates.  Elaine was petrified.  $2.00 toll, too.  No pictures on the bridge.

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Then we drove for a bit on the Washington side and stopped at a great picnic area for our lunch.  Great for most of the lunch until the bees started coming and we retreated to Blue.

We crossed back to the Oregon side at a proper bridge and made a brief stop  at the Dalles Dam.

Finally we left I-84 and headed north to Richland.  This is serious farming country, not what you think of when you think of Washington and Oregon.  The highlight of this portion was passing through Irrigon, Orgeon just for the enjoyment of saying the name.

We arrived in Richland and checked in at the Marriott TownPlace Suites.  We had a very nice dinner with a great view at Anthony’s at Columbia Point (which was right across the street).

After breakfast we will be heading north once again to Leavenworth, WA.  More about that when we get there,

We leave tomorrow for two weeks, will be back October 1st.  Sunday was final day.  Beautiful weather day!  Keeping it brief, we had a great breakfast at Gracie’s Sea Hag.  What could be better than eggs over easy, hash browns, and six fried Pacific oysters with a side of bacon!

After break fast we took a ride on the Otter Creek Loop to Foulweather Bay which was discovered by Captain Cook, our friend from Whitby in the UK, way back when.  Pics follow. (Phone photos, didn’t have camera) No captions.

Cocktails on the balcony were under glorious sunny skies.  Dinner was at home, courtesy of chef Elaine.  The sunset was glorious.  Many pics below.  No captions.

Tomorrow morning we drive northish to Portland, then east to Richland, WA for an overnight.  Six hour drive.  No post tomorrow.  Be back again from Leavenworth, WA on Tuesday.

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Fog had cleared overnight.  Mostly cloudy but dry.  Dry is good.  Two years back we got soaked through and through at the Salmon Bake.

Morning walks as usual.  Some new sights for you from my walk.

We drove down to the Salmon Bake  at 11:30.  Long line but it moved fast.  The salmon was delicious and so was the cole slaw.  We split two desserts – brownie with ice cream and marionberry cobbler with ice cream.  As we stood in line I think we were the youngest people there.  Seems as if a couple of buses from senior centers arrived just before us.

After eating we watched the Native American dancers for a bit.  They were up from Arizona.  Pictures and video below.

Then we walked around the harbor before returning to the condo.  I bought a Depoe Bay Coast Guard jacket from the Coast Guard booth at the Salmon Bake.

The afternoon was quiet at home.  Cocktails on a cool balcony.  No sun during cocktails for the first time.  Dinner was bread, cheese, paté, pears, and wine.  We had driven into Newport before the Salmon Bake to get a last delicious sourdough baguette.

It’s Sunday morning now.  The windows were closed last night as it rained most of the night.  Depoe Bay needs the rain.  All of Oregon does.  We should see some sun today with a nice day predicted for Monday when we hit the road.

It was dry on Friday but the fog was persistent almost the whole day.  We saw the sun twice during the day.

No sun on the morning walks.  Each day on the way into town we walk by a prime piece of property right on the ocean.  It’s right next to Tidal Raves Restaurant.  Run down and apparently empty (but with an old RV parked there), it looks like it a set right out of the movie Deliverance.  Further on the seals were still basking in the fog near the harbor and the charter fishing boats were going out.

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(Aside: want to read about an English seal basking 50 miles from the ocean?  It’s here.  This irrelevant information is provided as a public service by me, the Admin.  OK, Mianne, the word is officially out – I am the mysterious Admin!)

With at least the hope of sun we decided to take a ride south to Yachats and picnic along the way. Alas, the fog didn’t lift.  We made a couple of stops along the way (at Seal Rock and at Driftwood Beach) for foggy pictures along the ocean.  Just after Yachats is Cape Perpetua.  Here you can drive two miles up to the top of the promontory for one of the best views along the whole Oregon coast.  Up we went, and at the top we were above the fog.  Clear blue skies and a nice picnic table.  But absolutely no view except of the fog that persisted below us.  That was our first view of the sun for the day.

Cocktails on the balcony was a cool affair.  I had my polar fleece on and huddled in a blanket.  But between 5:30 and 6:30 the sun shone through the fog (our second view of it for the day), and we had clear views for about an hour before the fog bank rolled back in and enveloped us.  Dinner was at home.

Tomorrow (Saturday) is the annual Depot Bay Salmon Bake.  More about that tomorrow.

Weather Forecast: Terrible
Weather: Mostly Cloudy with Sunny Periods and No Rain

They sell Kratom everywhere!  Gas stations, convenience stores.  We had never heard of it.

Kratom, which has been used for thousands of years by the local people of Southeast Asia, is becoming popular among the citizens of the United States, who are experiencing a number of benefits from it, like relief from anxiety and depression. The most important use of the Kratom is that it helps persons to detox from the use of opiate and help in its withdrawal.

Read about what the National Institute on drug Abuse says here.

Quiet day again.  We went into Newport because the Pacific Northwest map I ordered from Walmart for store pickup had arrived.  I wanted it for our road trip which starts on Monday.  It’s a great Michelin map.  I had planned on buying a USA atlas at Costco when we were there, but they didn’t have any.  Remember when getting a map was as simple as stopping at a gas station and asking for one?  Stores just don’t sell them anymore.  And there is no AAA office anywhere near here.  (It’s unlike me not having the map before we left, but there you go!)  Anyway, we stopped at Otter Rock for a couple of pictures on the way home when we caught a nice sunny period.

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Nice walk into town this morning and I saw seals on the rocks under the bridge near Depoe Bay harbor.

Inspired by my artistic patterns gallery yesterday, I decided to be artistic again!

A Potpourri of Depoe Bay Store Windows
Pictures through glass don’t come out so good!

It was cloudy and very cool, so we were bundled up for cocktail time on the balcony.  As we shivered, the clouds magically parted and we got some nic e warming sunshine.  Dinner tonight was back at Tidal Raves.  More Eyrie, but this time a Rosé of Pinot Noir.  More Seahawk Bread (baguette, smoked salmon, cream cheese, havarti, shrimp, red onion).  More great food.  Chowder starters.  Mains: Elaine – Herb Crusted Pacific Rockfish with shrimp-caper sauce, smoked salmon potato cake; Joe – Oven Broiled Alaskan Halibut,crab risotto, vodka sauce.  We shared a dessert: a Giant Warm Chocolate Chunk Cookie (with walnuts) and Tillamook Vanilla Bean Ice Cream.

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First off, to those leaving comments, we read them all and appreciate each one.  I don’t reply to them individually, but if a question of interest arises, I try to mention it in the next post.  To Barb (whose has been here): it is considered off season but this September seems much busier than last September.  Elaine got her hair cut yesterday and Tom, the owner of the shop, told her it was the busiest season in the thirty he has lived here.  To Mianne (the cougar): very witty!  To Sue (my sister): do you remember living in Chelsea?  I would guess not.  I think you would have been four when we moved to Melrose.

Wednesday weather forecast:  Cloudy with lots of rain.
Wednesday weather: brief noontime shower and lots! of sun.

In defense of weathermen, Oregon as a whole got lots of rain including the north coast, Portland, and Salem.  The state needs rain badly.  Salem went an unheard of 90 days without a drop until just the other day.

We had a quiet day in Depoe Bay.  Elaine got her hair cut.  And she started a jig-saw puzzle – a picture of downtown Seattle – good practice as we will be there in about twelve days.  While she assembled the puzzle, I drove the mile north to Fogarty Creek State Park and took a walk on the beach.  Oregon has fantastic state parks!

Patterns at Fogarty Creek Park (My Artistic Side)

Dinner was at home (Shake and Bake) after the de rigueur cocktails on the balcony.  It might have been the nicest day yet.  It was quite cooler today with the high in Depoe Bay barely reaching 60.  Sitting on the balcony with the sun shining right at you feels quite warm even with temperatures in the 60’s.  (Sorry to those of you suffering in the desert heat or the northeast humidity!)  And another nice sunset.