Spokane to Kalaspell

I arrived in Spokane on Friday… had some research time in the local library, then headed back to my airport motel to meet Tina… she was flying in, due about midnight… Eventually, she landed about 8:00 am… having spent the night in the Seattle airport.

We headed back to the motel so she could shower… then headed east on I-90.  While Tina had been to Spokane before, she had never walked over and looked at the falls… I found the falls fascinating and unexpected… lots of towns have rivers and parks along side… few have anything as impressive as Spokane Falls… so we started with a detour through town… walking a loop across one bridge, then back across another.

I don’t know if either of us expected how nice the I-90 drive would be… through forests along lakes and rivers.  Luckily, the day’s planned drive allowed for some time to explore, so we didn’t feel rushed even with the late start and detour…

We got off the freeway in Kellogg to look at the historic district (there were signs on the freeway for the historic district)  The first thing we found was a collection of mining railroad equipment… a common theme here abouts… Seemingly, every town has a park with a collection of mining railroad equipment… a battery locomotive without its battery, a mine car or two, the miner’s cars, and a mucker…  Many stores have a mining car… some with equipment and some ore, some with flowers…

Back to Kellogg, Kellogg was a home to a long standing successful gold, later silver, lead and zinc mine, the Bunker Hill, and mill… the town’s economy based on the jobs from the mine… The mine closed in the early 1980’s… it is now a EPA superfund site.  They have turned part of the area into a ski resort… but the old part of town is pretty sad… it hasn’t really embraced, or been embraced by the ski resort… It was all closed stores and worn buildings… I found a quote on a web site about the town’s history

The town, wanting to change it's image, adopted an Alpine theme and built a gondola to the top of the Jack Ass Ski Bowl, renamed it Silver Mountain; changed Jack Ass Gulch to Jacob's Gulch, etc. etc. etc. But there are among us, people who believe that putting a duck in a chicken house and calling "chick-chick" will not change things. It is still a duck! It is still a chicken house.  From http://www.kellogg-idaho.com/

As a casual visitor, I have to agree…  But we did enjoy the Miner’s Hat Realty building, an office in the shape of a miner’s hat with lamp attached…  

A bit beyond Kellogg we got off the road again in Wallace… again we found a display of mining equipment in a park… but Wallace is not Kellogg.  Wallace has made the transition from “Silver Capital  of the World” to tourist town… very successfully.  We stopped at the Red Light Garage for a huckleberry milk shake… They had a mining car out front… also a flying saucer…   I-90 passes through town overhead… not through town geography suggests… appearently every building in the downtown is on the National Register… forcing highway engineers to respect the community…  We liked Wallace a lot…

Back onto the highway… back to the drive… At St Regis we left I-90… we paused at the “St Regis 4 way” a collection of gas stations and tourist centers… including the “Free Montana Trout Aquarium” located in a tourist store and hamburger stand and self identified “Tourist Information Center.”  We looked around, then got back on the road towards the National Bison Range.

The National Bison Range is a US Wildlife Service’s preserve, created by Teddy Roosevelt… They have 300+ Bison plus other animals within their boundaries… a 19 mile loop drive and a visitor’s center.  Your National Parks and Lands pass gets you in for free…

We saw Bison, Mule deer in velvet, white tailed deer, prong horn antelope…   Others saw a big horn sheep.  It is a wonderful place, and worth the time to visit… It took a couple of hours to drive the loop.

From there it was about a 2 hour drive north to Kalispell, and the Kalispell Grand Hotel, our stop for the night… we saw but didn’t stop at the Miracle of America Museum in Polson… but stopped for gas nearby…

It was about 6:00 when we finally reached Kalispell… were pleased to see an airplane on a stick on the edge of town (this blog has mentioned airplanes on sticks before… on one trip they became a theme…) this one was special… it had a propeller (most are jets, ex-military jets) and the propeller had bob-wire strung in circles to give the appearance of movement.

We found our hotel… the Kalispell Grand right downtown…  but that will have to wait until the next installment…