A GRAY DAY IN PICTURES

Mike and I put Nellie in the Magnum this morning and headed out. Our first stop was the Ruth Modie Wildlife Park which the Modie Conservancy and the City of Lewiston have been in the process of developing for the last 20 years or so. Its location is a gully below Broadview Drive where we used to live. Mike placed a multi-cache there some years back which was in need of maintenance.
Those of you who have walked the trail through the park would notice a lot of change. The first photo shows the trail entrance at the top of 13 Street. The pyramidal structure is a small-scale copy of the original gateway markers such as those that are on 8^th Street near the former Christian Science Church. Here's a photo of one of the old markers and one of the new at the other end of the trail. Preserving these markers has been a goal of the Modie Conservancy and the copies have been placed along the path as a means of disseminating wildlife information. The path through the park includes benches, plantings, and now a dedicated parking lot and a rest station behind the Veterans' Home.


From the park we drove to the top of the Lewiston Hill and turned onto the Old Spiral Highway so that we could look for a geocache near the top. We found it handily even though we had come away with the wrong stack of "cheat sheets." Note that someone used this lovely spot to dump an old refrigerator and some trash. Yes, there were bottle caps; however, they had been carefully replaced on the bottles and I couldn't get them off. A bottle opener was standard in the glove compartment of my parents' car, but we don't carry one.





Luck was with us again at the next cache off Down River Road. "We" easily found that cache and Mike recorded it while I took pictures. Those of you who know Lewiston will see familiar landmarks in this photo. Sorry for the utility lines.

After lunch at Subway, we were unable to find a cache in the artistic fountain at the new Bank of Whitman building at Diagonal and Bridge Streets, so we went on to a site off Valley View above Vineland Cemetery. This picture of sailboats on the Snake was taken from that location. Look closely and you can see golfers at the Clarkston Country Club. While Mike found the cache I gathered a pocketful of bottle caps. Although this is an upscale residential area, it evidently appeals to teen-agers as a parking spot. Awful to see such trash anywhere but almost unthinkable right in the middle of such a nice area.
It's good to be home now. The temperature in the house is gradually rising while the outside temp begins to drop. We had hoped for a warmer day, but we had fun in spite of the chill in the air. KW