SORTING, TOSSING, KEEPING, COMBINING

Central Ridge in the distance from the top of Plank's Pitch

It’s noteworthy that while in town I cleaned the utility room. I did
everything but pull out the washer and dryer, and that must happen, too. I did insist that Mike open the furnace and check there. We’re looking for a mouse nest, of course. Next trip in, I’ll clean my sewing room, also a daunting task. “Why would they be in your sewing room?” asked Mike. “There’s no food there.” They seek not only food but nesting material, and I have plenty of that on hand. 

I need more sealed storage. The question is, do I buy more containers, or do I part with some stuff in order to free up containers? For now, I’m choosing the latter, and I knew where to start – with a container of sewing notions and sundries, not mine but my mother’s! Back in the day, Mother sewed most of her daughters’ clothes as well as her own, so she had useful tools in her collection, and those eventually came my way. 

So, it’s mostly junk left in this storage container. The largest item was an eyelet setting punch (“the hole that holds”). Beyond that, there were a dozen partly used hook and eye cards, needles, pins, snaps, old spools of thread, the odd hank of embroidery floss, leftover pink beads from my wedding dress, two broken necklaces, a blind pull – you get the picture – much of it in vintage packaging. Some decisions were hard to make, but I know I don’t need a half dozen wool rug hooks. One or two will suffice for a craft that I don’t pursue. Some items I couldn’t identify. 

I was tempted to say, “I just can’t do this,” and put the box back in the closet, but I pressed on. I made three piles: toss, donate, and keep. The tossed items went into the garbage. The donated items were bagged, including the hole punch. And I painstakingly put away the keepers, which necessitated cleaning out a drawer. The effects of a clean-out are far-reaching. Et voila! – an empty container ready or re-use. 

But as I was taking my shower – that’s where I have my epiphanies – it suddenly dawned on me that I should keep that hole punch. Not only is it an antique, but it’s a heavy-duty tool and probably better than can be purchased today. So, I grabbed it out of the donation bag and will keep it with my sewing supplies.

And why did Mother have this hole punch? Occasionally she would use it to make eyelets when she accessorized an outfit with a self-fabric belt. And how will I use it? Eyelets in doll shoes. KW

 

THE GREAT RODENT WAR CONTINUES

The grain on the far fields has been harvested; the canola is still here.

We have had our challenges with Blogger. Mike’s posts regarding his motocaching adventure are out of order, and we aren’t sure if it’s us or them. The process discourages the posting of photos.

To catch us up to the present:

On Tuesday (Aug. 18), a day of “extreme heat,” Mike rode back to town. He motocached to and from, but I don’t think he would have gone on such a hot day had it not been to check the mousetraps at the town house. He said we had just one in an old Victor trap, but the bait was gone from the four new “PIC” traps. Rats!! That means we’ve been feeding the mice rather than catching them. He also identified that old spot under the kitchen sink as a point of egress. He said he would repair that seal when we return to town. More delay, but I’ve relaxed a bit. If they get into my yarn, I’ll just buy more! 

Stairwell closet

And then, on Thursday (Aug. 20), Mike opened the closet under the stairs at the farmhouse, where we keep leftover paint and his shooting accessories and cried, “Foul odor.” Uh-oh! If I had known the morning’s chore would be to clean that closet, I would have stayed in bed!

 

Being under the stairway, the ceiling of this closet slants from the doorway down to the floor, so you can’t stand up in there. Mike crawled along and handed things to me one at a time. Out came the shooting accessories and then one by one we removed all the leftover paint we ever had in this house – from 17 years ago as well as from the remodel two years ago. We had to take everything out before we came to the nest in the very back corner – yes, a nest! – constructed of paper (Mike’s shooting targets) and what looked like insulation. At that point, we asked Bess to check it out, and she determined that the nest was empty. Upon further investigation, Mike found holes where the ceiling meets the floor, undoubtedly made by the mice, and he stuffed steel wool into that crevice. At least one good thing came of it: we tossed the old paint.

Smoke fills the canyon

I reminded Mike that we aren’t going to win this war. We can only hope to keep the mice at bay, and that means staying vigilant. 

On Sunday (Aug. 23), we returned to town. Upon investigating the traps, we found that the good old trustworthy Victor had one mouse, but the bait was again gone from those “PIC” brand traps. However, I have to say, these mice are mighty small – perhaps too small to trigger the traps. Sunday afternoon Mike sprayed more sealant under the kitchen sink. I brought traps from the farmhouse that we set up.

The pond

Once we go to bed, the mice come out to play. SNAP! – and if we’re awake, Mike gets up to check and re-set the trap.

“Was it a small one?” I called to him.

“Well, they’re getting bigger,” he laughed, reminding me that it doesn’t take long.

How many generations of mice have been raised in my house? Clearly this isn’t the end of this story. KW

AUGUST 2020 MOTOCACHIING TRIP - DAY 3

As good as the Lazy J was, there was no breakfast so we made do with granola bars and snacks.  After heading west on I-90 for about 40 miles we exited north on Highway 89.  We stopped for a nice cache called “Steve the Moose” named for the moose the cache owner had seen in this spot a number of times.  Access required a short hike through the brush and across a short abandoned railroad bridge where the cache was located beneath the end of the bridge.  We continued north on Hwy 89 until it intersected Highway 12 just south of White Sulphur Springs where we turned west.  Heading west and northwest on Hwy 12 we passed through Helena before stopping at a very well done Travel Bug Hotel.  It was a secure metal box affixed to a telephone pole requiring a combination to open the lock on the box.  The combination was in a clue hidden in the description.

Travel Bug Hotel

 

Nevada Lake

At Avon we veered northwest on Highway 141 where we found an interesting cache by Nevada Lake where we rode our bikes down a hill on a dirt road.  From there we hiked up a steep hill and commenced our hunt.  I was just about to give up when I finally found it a ways off from where the coords had taken us.  I was a little apprehensive getting my bike turned around where the road had petered out but I made it.  Of course, Clint had no problem.

 Our next stop was the only unsuccessful one of the whole trip which is amazing.  It featured an Osprey nest and was supposed to be a bison tube hanging in a tree.  There had been a couple unsuccessful tries before us so I suspect it’s gone.

 We continued on around Flathead Lake on Highway 93.  Where Hwy 93 loops back east around the end of the lake we turned west on Highway 28. On Hwy 28 we picked up a couple of caches, one that I particularly liked at Rainbow Lake.  It required a hike up through some woods and rocks and afforded a great view of the lake.  When Hwy 28 terminated at Highway 200 we rode the short distance into Plains to refuel and get something cold to drink. We then reversed direction back east to where Hwy 200 intersected Highway 135 and turned south toward our evening destination at St. Regis. 

Rainbow Lake

Clint and the Witch

 Some years before I had stayed at the Little River Motel there and I wanted to experience it again.  It’s at the end of an old highway and is like what used to be called tourist courts with little cabins scattered about.  Additionally it had these spooky wooden carved figures scattered about the wooded grounds.  As is often the case, things are not the same as before.  It wasn’t bad but not as good as before.  Only one of the wooden figures was in decent shape and our room didn’t have air conditioning.  Ordinarily that wouldn’t have been so bad but on what could have been the hottest day of the year things didn’t cool off as quickly as usual.  We did have a big fan but it was rather anemic.

 

After getting unpacked and cleaned up we rode down town for dinner.  We had a great dinner and afterwards got into a conversation with a couple of old bikers also staying at the motel.  I got the impression that their talk was bigger than their deeds.  Our third day turned out to be our second longest with 447 miles and only five caches found and our one and only DNF. (To be continued) M/W

 

AUGUST 2020 MOTOCACHING TRIP - DAY 4

After no breakfast again this morning other than our snacks we backtracked up Hwy 135 and stopped at a cache I had unsuccessfully attempted the last time I was in the area several years ago. It had 23 Favorite points and having not found it did not put me in exclusive company. The coords took us to a Forest Service sign that was out in the open. We looked and looked and I was about to give up again when Clint snagged it. It was disguised as a bolt in the sign. If you pulled on the bolt it came out as a sleeve with the log rolled up in the sleeve.

Just a little farther up the road just beyond the little town of Paradise was one of my favorites. It was called “Spring Forth aka Paradise Water”. There is a gushing spring by the roadside that has provided clean cold fresh water for passersby for almost 100 years. The natural phenomenon all started when the railroad built the syphon when they separated Norman Hermes’s grandfather’s farm on the north from their water supply of Kennedy Creek on the south. A man was there when we arrived filling up containers. He said it was the best water in the world so we took him at his word and also tanked up. And it was very good despite the sign admonishing you to drink at your own risk.

After reaching Hwy 200 and riding west through Plains we stopped for a cache that had received 28 Favorite points called “Drill, Baby Drill”. It was a sheer cliff about 20’ high and we assumed there must be a hole drilled in it somewhere but we couldn’t find it. We hiked down to where we could get to the top of the cliff but couldn’t find anything up top either. So we climbed back down and suddenly Clint said, “There it is”. What he saw was a vertical 1/4” thick wire about two feet long. The color of the wire blended perfectly with the color of the rock. The cache container was attached to the end of the wire concealed in a hole drilled at a vertical angle in the cliff so that it couldn’t be seen.

We continued ridding on Hwy 200 crossing the beautiful Idaho Panhandle. There was lots of traffic all along this highway. We stopped at Clark Fork at a Travel Bug Hotel in a couple’s front yard. I had seen their handle (Rolling Oldies) on one or two of my caches before, and we picked up a Travel Bug there. This was another extremely well made cache with an incredible 60 Favorite points.

Continuing on across the Panhandle we stopped for a cache between Priest River and Newport called “The Mangy Moose” placed in 2009. It was basically an advertisement for what is now a defunct restaurant. It looked as if it had fairly recently closed, possibly a victim of COVID 19.

The Mangy Moose

At Sandpoint we had picked up Highway 2 which we left shortly after entering WA turning northwest on Highway 20. The rest of this day’s riding was the most enjoyable of the trip for me (with the possible exception of Hwy 12 up the Lochsa which is familiar territory). Now we were riding alongside the beautiful Pend Oreille River and the traffic had diminished considerably. We left the river turning west at Usk and the road only gets better – hills, curves and evergreen forest. We didn’t stop again until we were well down the road about 14 miles east of Colville at perhaps my favorite stop of the trip. This cache, the “WaStatePks100: Crystal Falls”, featured a beautiful waterfall with boulders strewn around to sit on and enjoy the view. We ate our lunch there and visited with a couple who arrived while we were there in their Mercedes mini-motorhome.

Our next stop was at Sherman Pass east of Republic. This cache featured some metal cutouts of wolves obscurely situated up the steep mountain side. Fortunately you didn’t have to climb up to the wolves to log the cache. It was a micro located on the sign at the roadside.

Wolves on mountain

Clint snags "Wolves" cache

Our last road stop was a little past Waconda and was an interesting but sad story. It was called “The Pflug Mansion”. John Pflug had a dream of building a lovely German style mansion for his growing family which he began in 1908. Money being tight, he hauled all the lumber himself from a sawmill about ten miles away and did all the work himself. Unfortunately he was never able to finish his dream house but the family lived for several years in a part that was finished. It has been vacant since 1921. There was a nice home about a quarter mile east of the old mansion and I wondered if it belonged to one of his descendants.

The Pflug Mansion

                                                                   

We checked into the Red Apple Motel in Tonasket late afternoon which turned out to be a nice place to stay. While Clint was relaxing I took a short hike down to the park for a cache. The prior logs said you needed to be tall to get this one. I did get it and my comment was, “I’m not tall but I can climb a tree”.

We ended our day with a little ride down to the other end of town for some delicious sandwiches and ice cream cones. On this most enjoyable day we covered 348 miles and picked up nine caches. (To be continued) M/W
 

P.S. The reason for the small print at beginning and ending is that Blogger has a mind of its own.

 

AUGUST 2020 MOTOCACHING TRIP - FINAL DAY

The next morning we set out south on Highway 97. Before long it joined the Okanogen River in country Clint said reminded him of the Fairfield, ID, area in Camas County – somewhat open country with mountains not too distant but much lower elevation than Camas County. Our first stop for a cache and breakfast snack was at a historical site commemorating the Okanogen Trail also called the Caribou Trail North. The Okanagan Trail was an inland route to the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush from the Lower Columbia region of the Washington and Oregon Territories in 1858–1859. The route was essentially the same as that used by the Hudson's Bay Company fur brigades, following the Columbia River to the confluence of the Okanogan River, and then up into Canada. This route also borders the Colville Indian Reservation on the west.

At Ft. Okanogen State Park we veered left on Highway 17. Along here we made a stop at the “Highway 17 Travel Bug Hotel” and unloaded the two travel bugs we had collected. It was located at a farm house out in the country. Hwy 17 goes east for a few miles before abruptly turning south. It was along this barren stretch of highway that we found a very amusing cache. It was called “Barrell of Rocks”, and that's what it was. Nothing so unusual about that, but someone had neatly placed what looked like a brand new bottle and can of beer on a flat rock in front of the cache. It had nothing to do with the cache. It gave us a good laugh.

Care for a not so cool one?

Highway 17 abuts Highway 2 at a high vista where we found the next cache. Quoting from the cache write up: “Looking out to the south the Dry Falls and Lower Grand Coulee open to a full view. Try to imagine the times during the ice ages when cataclysmic floods covered everything, cascading through from NW Montana and Canada at a rate of billions of gallons per minute. Some say they would have been the most voluminous falls the world has ever known. To the east and northeast one can see Dry Falls Dam, Banks Lake and Coulee City. Soak up the panorama that stretches out before your eyes.” And it was quite a panoramic view.

Just west of the little town of Stratford we stopped at the Stratford Cemetery. I believe it is the most unusual cemetery I’ve ever seen. It was a small plot between two farm fields, perfectly laid out with what looked like mostly newer graves. However, there wasn’t a blade of grass. It was just dirt with a little gravel in some places. Large sections were bordered with concrete and I saw what looked like sprinklers. I can only think (and hope) that they intend to plant grass in the dirt areas. Otherwise it’s bound to be one muddy mess when it rains.

The next cache which had 44 Favorite points and was located on the outskirts of Moses Lake was overshadowed by what happened there. If fact, I can’t remember much about the actual cache except that it was kind of a geometrical puzzle. I had the only mishap of the trip here. After finding the cache we decided we had better fuel up. As we were on the side of a busy four lane road we just rode across a sand strip on the side of the highway to a service station which had a curb around the asphalt. The curb didn't look too high so we thought we could just ride over it. What we didn't see was that the other side of the curb was fairly high. Consequently, when I went over it my skid plate didn't clear the curb on the way down and I was dumped in the lot. Clint had managed to pogo over and yelled a warning just as I was coming down on the curb. No serious damage but a bummer nonetheless.

We continued south on Hwy 17 which joined Highway 26 just east of Othello. We picked up a couple more uninspiring caches before arriving at Washtucna where we had lunch in a shady little park. The little park had an interesting skeleton display in it. From there we continued home on the familiar route to Highways 260 and 261 before hitting Highway 12 beyond Starbuck. We arrived in the Lewiston-Clarkston valley on a hot mid afternoon. This had been our shortest day of just 293 miles but with 8 caches logged. The total trip was just over 2,000 miles. It was a fun journey as always but I don’t think I’ll try another one in August unless I plan short days so the riding is just in the mornings because of the heat. M/W

Washtucna Picnic

 

TUTORIAL: HOW TO TURN YOUR COMBINE ON A STEEP HILLSIDE

This is a trial post to see if I can learn to use the new Blogger format.

Moving to corner -- get ready to turn

Mike is posting the saga of his latest motocaching trip, and to his credit, he tackled the new Blogger format. I admit that I took one look at it and went right back to “legacy Blogger,” but they tell us the new format is here to stay because the platform on which it was originally built is obsolete and will soon be discontinued. Bottom line: If we want to continue as Blogger bloggers, we have to learn the new format.

Start counterclockwise turn

Slow and easy now

Even though I post pictures all the time, I have never found it easy to format them in Blogger. One or two work well. Six or seven is maximum. And it’s always easier to align the photos if you have more text. Just posting the pictures doesn’t work well.

Whew! We did it!

In fact, I’m actually expanding the text right now so that I can post the photo tutorial of how to turn your combine on a steep hillside. Hopefully, you will never have to do this, but if you do, these photos will show you how.

This is going to take more experimentation -- blogging, not turning my combine. KW

AUGUST 2020 MOTOCACHING TRIP - DAY 2

 We were up early the next morning picking up our sack breakfasts consisting of a small sweet roll, orange and granola bar. We headed north on Highway 20 toward Yellowstone. Our first cache was “Henry’s Lake Outlet” shortly before entering the park. I appreciated my Golden Age Passport that saved me the $30 entry fee for motorcycles.

Our first stop in the park was for a virtual cache at beautiful Gibbon Falls. I was mildly surprised to see so many people masked up. We kept our distance but as we were outside we didn’t see the necessity of donning our masks.

                                                              

A couple of the things I had wanted to see were the mud pots and hot springs. So we did about a mile hike through the Paint Pots and Beryl Springs.

   My planned route was to slant eastward across the park by way of the Norris Canyon road. I had seen that there was some road construction in the area but what I didn’t realize was that the road was completely closed. Consequently, we had to backtrack from Canyon Junction and travel north to Mammoth Hot Springs and then turn east to get to the northeast corner of the park. It was super hot but we found some shade at the edge of a parking lot at Mammoth Hot Springs and ate our lunch.

We stopped before leaving the park at an Earth cache called “Root Beer Float” which was a big mound of Travertine or calcium carbonate. It was at this spot that we saw all the bison. There must have been several hundred. One big bull planted himself in the middle of the road and seemed to say, “You can just wait until I’m good and ready to move on”. And we did. It seemed like ten minutes. Those critters are big!

We went through Cook City and eventually made our way to the legendary Bear Tooth Pass. I had ridden this pass only once and it was from the other direction, cold, wet and foggy. Today it was not cold or foggy but parts were wet and there was some road construction. This section of road truly looks like a can of worms on a map. It was a fun ride but I took some of the very sharp curves with some caution.

After descending the pass we continued on Highway 212 through Red Lodge, MT, where I stayed on my last trip in that area. At this point we turned northwest on Highway 78 which was a truly delightful road – nothing too technical but nice curves and hills. We stopped for one cache along the way and at Roscoe, MT, to refuel. We hit I-90 at Columbus and proceeded west for a cache at Reed Point. For some unknown reason my GPSr took us about 6 miles past Reed Point and then had us backtrack on a frontage road. At any rate, we finally got there and found the “Old West Hospitality” cache with an incredible 80+ Favorite points. Clint found the cache which was hidden between the bear’s legs.  

 

                                                                                   At the little town of Big Timber we checked into the Lazy J Motel which was one of the nicest motels I’ve visited. Everything was absolutely first class. After getting cleaned up we had dinner at a BBQ place that was very good with generous helpings. We traveled 405 miles this day which was a long day considering touring Yellowstone and picking up 5 caches along the way. Pictures are "Henry's Lake Outlet" cache, Gibbon Falls, Paint Pots and Beryl Springs, one of many big Bison and Clint attacking the bear at the "Old West Hospitality" cache. (To be continued) M/W