From the Traveling Harrington’s.
Please email Olivia@bobheck.com or fredharrington@yahoo.com with comments.
Monday, August 4 we headed into civilization. We needed supplies and maintenance. We added considerably to the economy in the Kalispell area. We found a place to stay at the Glacier Camp Ground, i.e. trailer park, on the river near Kalispell. This is one of our rare stops at a commercial park.
This is why we do not like trailer parks!
We made an appointment for oil change and check up at the Chevrolet house then found a car wash big enough for the trailer. Olivia climbed on top of the trailer and gave it a soapy scrub and power wash while Fred worked on all the bugs on the front. When Olivia climbed down Fred took over the soap and wash. THAT WAS A CHORE!
We were so tired we found a Mexican food restaurant and enjoyed that cuisine. It’s been a long time since New Mexico and Mexican food. Not surprisingly, we have seen Mexican restaurants along our journey, but have stopped at none since New Mexico. The restaurant had a casino attached to it and the margaritas were only $2.50, so we had another. We then started our shopping list and went to K-Mart and Wal-Mart. Then we fell into bed.
Tuesday, August 5 found us at the Chevrolet house first thing. We took the laptop and worked on our BLOG while we waited. They had internet for us to use and we loaded pictures and typed on the BLOG and nearly finished all of Canada and Glacier. We have had a hard time catching up on the internet. We had more maintenance done on the Suburban than planned but are glad we did. Then we hit Target, Home Depot, and Smith’s (Kroger’s), we were glad we had leftovers for supper.
Patti Clemmer had been telling us that Sharon Noles Tillett lived in Montana somewhere. Olivia was going to ask for a referral for a haircut, if we were in her area. Finally about 8 pm we found a message from Patti telling us to call Lynn at her number and find out where Sharon was. Sure enough when we called Lynn she said Sharon lived in Big Fork, MT. That was 18 miles away and 1 mile from the State Park we had targeted for the next day! What a small world. Anyway we made connections with Sharon about 10 pm.
Wednesday, August 6 Olivia got up early to finish the BLOG episode while we still had electricity and in doing so accidentally deleted Canada part 2. She could have cried! Olivia needed to make a return to K-Mart, get coffee and wine so she ran those errands. When she arrived back at the trailer about 11:00 am, Sharon called to say she had a cancellation at noon if we could be there. We made it and enjoyed visiting while she cut Olivia’s hair.
She invited us to come back in and we would eat together when she finished working. We found the state park full, so took another direction to Swan Lake Forest Camp about 18 miles south of Big Fork
We met her husband Doug at the Mexican food place across the street from her shop and enjoyed being introduced to everyone in town. Sharon’s son Scott was also there. He is Teenya’s age and was interested in her life. This was truly where the locals ate and visited. After supper we followed them to 
their home on the Flathead River just below the lake.
We toured Doug’s garden where we gathered raspberries and they gave us onions, bell pepper and tomatoes. And some cherries she had bought. We hoped to find a place to pick cherries the next day.
We watched their wild turkeys fly to into the trees to roost as the sun was setting and we headed back to the trailer at the forest camp south of Big Fork. What a delightful day. Sharon and Doug were wonderful hosts and very nice to be around.
Thursday August 7, we set out to find cherries and didn’t find any U-pick orchards. This was the last of the crop and all were picked. We found an orchard that had cherries for $1.50 a pound so we bought 15 pounds, then started working on sending each daughter four pounds. We mailed them express mail and hoped they get them Saturday. Then we went into the Big Fork library and worked four hours recreating the Canadian BLOGs. Thanks to Angie for uploading the pictures two times and Fred for retyping his part of the text. The evening was spent trying to stay cool in the campground. The high was in the low nineties.
The Swan Lake Forest Camp where we have stayed four nights is lovely. Double-wide paved pads (25 feet) making a very nice patio and walk around and lots of space between campers. It is a forest camp, therefore no hook-ups, which is fine. We wished for cooler weather or electricity because there was NO breeze. JoAnn Wilder, we used your Bastrop hand fans here! Otherwise it is one of the nicest campgrounds we have been in.Friday, 8-8-08, found us canning cherries. Earlier we bought a cherry pitter in Kalispell and it worked great. We canned 8 pints and had a bowl left over to eat. We were through by noon so we spent the remainder of the day resting. We are both enjoying a lot of reading, working on computer and sudoku.
Saturday, August 9 was the Huckleberry Festival in Swan Lake in the day use section of our forest camp. Swan Lake is a community on Swan Lake. It consists of one store. Although there is development around the lake, Swan Lake proper has a population of about 10. We didn’t know what to expect. We walked over about 9:30 and the best of the pies were already gone. The volunteer fire department had made over 50 pies to sell at $20 each, with the help of their wives. By 11:00 they were all gone! There were about 50 booths. The crowd was elbow to elbow! Another charity was selling huckleberry ice cream and it too sold out early. We bought a pie and ice cream, t-shirts as well as a few souvenirs and
craft ideas.
Those who know Fred know he is “into” berry picking. Well he has heard the talk, seen the signs about huckleberries for hundreds of miles and now he was at a huckleberry festival, but hadn’t seen a huckleberry plant. It had been very hard on him. So he made inquires at the huckleberry festival. He was told, in a whisper, by one man to take a nearby gravel road “about 3 miles” up the mountain and when we see happy bears stop and join them. Not really. He didn’t mention bears. Bears love huckleberries, but they have other patches hopefully. We stopped about 3 miles up and hunted real hard, but no huckleberries. It would have been helpful if we knew what a berry and its plant looked like, but we weren’t about to let a small detail like that stop us. We were aware of the possibility of bears. Olivia was singing and making a lot of strange noises. We were told this will “scare off” the bears. It worked real well. We didn’t see a bear! Nor any other wild life.
We decided to go up higher. Finally, about 4 miles up, we saw someone else. We stopped in the road and a nice polite young man about 30 years old came to greet us. His wife and two pre-school aged children continued to pick. He had found huckleberries! He showed us his meager harvest – about $20 worth at the local rate. Now we knew what to look for. Fred told him we were from out-of-state and didn’t know the first thing about huckleberries and could use some help. He showed his good humor by telling us we needed to buy a permit to pick. I suggested we park and join his family in picking at this spot and quickly found that huckleberry pickers and Texas dewberry pickers have a different etiquette. He quickly suggested we should go at least 100 yards away to pick. I’ve since found that huckleberry patch locations are carefully guarded secrets. Fights over patches are common, even on public lands. These huckleberry pickers are serious.
We went a half mile further up and parked. We made our own trail as we went into the woods. We were singing and looking for bear with one eye and huckleberries with the other. Amazingly, we found huckleberries. We managed to harvest 2 cups before the thunder, lightening and rain ran us down the mountain. On the way down we stopped to visit with the young man we talked with earlier. He was still picking in the rain! It was a very nice experience for us. We enjoyed it. Now that we have experience, we can say huckleberries are in the blueberry family. They are smaller with a more intense flavor than blueberries, but they are similar. They seem to grow at higher altitudes and apparently resist cultivation. It would be somewhat accurate to call them a western mountain blueberry. Only don’t do so at a huckleberry patch with serious pickers nearby.
small white crosses on a red pole. It was very powerful. We knew someone had died at each spot. Some poles had multiple crosses. This must be a very dangerous road because we saw over 30. This would be a good project for MADD in conjunction with the Highway departments everywhere.
Sharon, we said it would take us more than 3 hours to get to Farragut State Park in Idaho. We left the Swan Lake campground at 9 am. It was over 235 miles and we arrived at 3:30 pm. We did stop to see the Kootenai Falls which took about 45 minutes, but otherwise we were on the road. We were exhausted when we arrived at this new State Park. The weather is cooler and there is electricity, except all the spots are reserved for the next night, so we had to show up in the morning and see if we could renew our current spot because of a cancellation.
Monday, August 11, sure enough there were no cancellations so be packed up and headed south on Hwy 95. As we drove through Coeur d’Alene we spotted a Target and stopped to stock up on paper goods. Fred was very impressed with economic activity of the area. There are many new houses and millions of square feet of commercial development. It looked like Dallas suburbia! He didn’t expect this in Idaho. As he waited for Olivia to finish shopping, he started a conversation with a stranger in the Target parking lot. The stranger was from Dallas and a 1986 graduate of NTSU, Fred in 1964. He was happy to visit with someone from back home. He tells me the same story I’ve heard many places out west: “It’s the Californians.” The story goes like this. Californians move to an area in waves. They have money and no understanding of the local real estate market. In California they are accustomed to offering more than the asking price of a house. So they continue to do so here. They pay more than the house is worth and inflate the real estate market. Many locals are priced out of the market in their own town and must buy in other locations. Then they work to make their new town like to one they left in California. Fred talked to distressed locals in every state we have visited and they all tell the same story. In truth it is probably retired people from our generation and from every state. There are just more from California, so they bear the brunt of the criticism. They’ve worked hard in a stressful environment all their adult lives and dream of retiring to a less pressure packed area far removed from their old environment. I see both sides.
We decided to go up higher. Finally, about 4 miles up, we saw someone else. We stopped in the road and a nice polite young man about 30 years old came to greet us. His wife and two pre-school aged children continued to pick. He had found huckleberries! He showed us his meager harvest – about $20 worth at the local rate. Now we knew what to look for. Fred told him we were from out-of-state and didn’t know the first thing about huckleberries and could use some help. He showed his good humor by telling us we needed to buy a permit to pick. I suggested we park and join his family in picking at this spot and quickly found that huckleberry pickers and Texas dewberry pickers have a different etiquette. He quickly suggested we should go at least 100 yards away to pick. I’ve since found that huckleberry patch locations are carefully guarded secrets. Fights over patches are common, even on public lands. These huckleberry pickers are serious.
We went a half mile further up and parked. We made our own trail as we went into the woods. We were singing and looking for bear with one eye and huckleberries with the other. Amazingly, we found huckleberries. We managed to harvest 2 cups before the thunder, lightening and rain ran us down the mountain. On the way down we stopped to visit with the young man we talked with earlier. He was still picking in the rain! It was a very nice experience for us. We enjoyed it. Now that we have experience, we can say huckleberries are in the blueberry family. They are smaller with a more intense flavor than blueberries, but they are similar. They seem to grow at higher altitudes and apparently resist cultivation. It would be somewhat accurate to call them a western mountain blueberry. Only don’t do so at a huckleberry patch with serious pickers nearby.
We were invited to dinner at Sharon and Doug’s home and were treated like royalty. They are such lovely and hospitable hosts. After dinner they took us on a boat ride on Flathead Lake – the biggest lake west of the Mississippi river. They showed us all the beautiful, expensive houses and resorts and parks. The Big Fork Lodge was the most exclusive. You can go there for the week, all inclusive, for $3,700 each person. No phones, no TV. They said Martin Sheen went there and threw a fit wanting phone and TV. They turned him down, but now he comes back every year. Even the big shots find out it is great to live without TV!
Coming back into their yard, we saw a buck and 3 does and then we saw a skunk! There is lots of wild life in their yard.
Sunday, August 10 we are very concerned about our long-time friend Jerry Childress’s health. He (along with his wife Kathryn) found out about two weeks ago he has stomach cancer. They were in Star Canyon, Wyoming at the time. Jeff (his son) went up and drove them home to McKinney, Texas and a doctor there. They have seen the doctor, bought a small home in Allen, Texas and starting Jerry’s treatment. He is in our thoughts and prayers and wish you would add him to your prayer list also.
We left Swan Lake and took HWY 2 NW and into Idaho and almost to Canada. The roads up here follow the rivers and valleys and to go west we had to go north, then back south. This is true of many areas in the mountains and we have enjoyed the scenery along so many rivers. This time we followed the Kootenai River and at one point we walked
Coming back into their yard, we saw a buck and 3 does and then we saw a skunk! There is lots of wild life in their yard.
Sunday, August 10 we are very concerned about our long-time friend Jerry Childress’s health. He (along with his wife Kathryn) found out about two weeks ago he has stomach cancer. They were in Star Canyon, Wyoming at the time. Jeff (his son) went up and drove them home to McKinney, Texas and a doctor there. They have seen the doctor, bought a small home in Allen, Texas and starting Jerry’s treatment. He is in our thoughts and prayers and wish you would add him to your prayer list also.
We left Swan Lake and took HWY 2 NW and into Idaho and almost to Canada. The roads up here follow the rivers and valleys and to go west we had to go north, then back south. This is true of many areas in the mountains and we have enjoyed the scenery along so many rivers. This time we followed the Kootenai River and at one point we walked
on a trail that crossed the railroad track on a concrete footbridge with a grated stair way of four flights to the ground. This was hard to negotiate because you could see the ground and was deceiving. It must have been made for icy weather. We ended up at the
Kootenai Falls. The rock formations make this falls a stair step.
On the way we saw the rapids below the falls.
Kootenai Falls. The rock formations make this falls a stair step. On the way we saw the rapids below the falls.Along Highway 2 and specifically a 10 mile section before Libby we noticed a number of
small white crosses on a red pole. It was very powerful. We knew someone had died at each spot. Some poles had multiple crosses. This must be a very dangerous road because we saw over 30. This would be a good project for MADD in conjunction with the Highway departments everywhere.Sharon, we said it would take us more than 3 hours to get to Farragut State Park in Idaho. We left the Swan Lake campground at 9 am. It was over 235 miles and we arrived at 3:30 pm. We did stop to see the Kootenai Falls which took about 45 minutes, but otherwise we were on the road. We were exhausted when we arrived at this new State Park. The weather is cooler and there is electricity, except all the spots are reserved for the next night, so we had to show up in the morning and see if we could renew our current spot because of a cancellation.
Monday, August 11, sure enough there were no cancellations so be packed up and headed south on Hwy 95. As we drove through Coeur d’Alene we spotted a Target and stopped to stock up on paper goods. Fred was very impressed with economic activity of the area. There are many new houses and millions of square feet of commercial development. It looked like Dallas suburbia! He didn’t expect this in Idaho. As he waited for Olivia to finish shopping, he started a conversation with a stranger in the Target parking lot. The stranger was from Dallas and a 1986 graduate of NTSU, Fred in 1964. He was happy to visit with someone from back home. He tells me the same story I’ve heard many places out west: “It’s the Californians.” The story goes like this. Californians move to an area in waves. They have money and no understanding of the local real estate market. In California they are accustomed to offering more than the asking price of a house. So they continue to do so here. They pay more than the house is worth and inflate the real estate market. Many locals are priced out of the market in their own town and must buy in other locations. Then they work to make their new town like to one they left in California. Fred talked to distressed locals in every state we have visited and they all tell the same story. In truth it is probably retired people from our generation and from every state. There are just more from California, so they bear the brunt of the criticism. They’ve worked hard in a stressful environment all their adult lives and dream of retiring to a less pressure packed area far removed from their old environment. I see both sides.
Then we proceeded through the town and into rolling hills of wheat, wheat and more wheat. It was being harvested and the patterns made on the hillsides were very interesting. We decided to stop early to get a spot and ended up at Heyburn State Park. It had heavily wooded spaces with electricity. A very relaxing place. We thought of Verna & Chester as we drove through Plummer, Idaho (population 900) to arrive at this campground.
Tuesday, August 12, Departing Heyburn and heading south on Hwy 95 the landscape changed to MORE wheat, or as Fred said,
“amber grain”. The wind was not blowing so no “waves”. There is also a lot of timber around the fields of grain. These fields are on big rolling hills and are not terraced and no fences. 
We tried to capture this experience of vast fields, big houses, barns, but could not come close to the real life pictures.Then Surprise, a sign saying 7% grade down for 6 miles. We were on a freeway and
we pulled out to view the valley below. We saw the Clearwater join the Snake River with Lewiston and Clarkson on both sides of the Snake. On the drive down we counted 6 truck runaway ramps. Fortunately no trucks were in them.We negotiated the town of Lewiston and settled for the night at
Hells Canyon State Park on the outskirts of town. Actually we are not in the canyon, it is several miles up stream from here, but no roads from this point. This campground is very lush with trees and grass because they water constantly. Across the road behind us it is dead grass! We contemplated taking a jet boat to see the gorge, but it was 118 miles for the half day (6+ hours) trip and we decided our old bones wouldn’t stand the bouncing.
We drove into town, scouted it out, picked up a few supplies and washed the suburban.
Wednesday, August 13, Five months out! We spent this day, washing, paying bills, working on this blog and then taking a nice drive to see this area. We drove up the old spiral road to see the view. This is the old Hwy 95 with lots of twists. The freeway is better for today’s traffic, but this was better for sight seeing. Then we crossed the Snake River into Clarkston, WA to see a sidewalk time line of the Lewis & Clark trip. This was an unusual way to show their trip. Then we found a river road that went further up stream on the Snake. It went 35 miles, but because the sun was going down we only went about 10. Too bad we found this so late and we were moving the next day.
Please email Olivia@bobheck.com or fredharrington@yahoo.com with comments.
Love to all,
Fred & Olivia
We drove into town, scouted it out, picked up a few supplies and washed the suburban.
Wednesday, August 13, Five months out! We spent this day, washing, paying bills, working on this blog and then taking a nice drive to see this area. We drove up the old spiral road to see the view. This is the old Hwy 95 with lots of twists. The freeway is better for today’s traffic, but this was better for sight seeing. Then we crossed the Snake River into Clarkston, WA to see a sidewalk time line of the Lewis & Clark trip. This was an unusual way to show their trip. Then we found a river road that went further up stream on the Snake. It went 35 miles, but because the sun was going down we only went about 10. Too bad we found this so late and we were moving the next day.
Please email Olivia@bobheck.com or fredharrington@yahoo.com with comments.
Love to all,
Fred & Olivia
This is the first of a draft.
