Idaho, Part 7

Two of my main interests are wildlife and Native American culture. Having just finished our tour of the Wolf Education and Research Center, we spent part of the next day at the Nez Perce Indian Heritage Center outside Lewiston, Idaho. (There is a nearby town called "Clarkston", too. Guess what this part of Idaho is famous for....)

The Heritage Center (left) hosts a set of displays with traditional Nez Perce regalia, artifacts, and information, as well as a theater for a short film about the tribe's history. The people call themselves the Nimi'ipuu, which means "The People"; "Nez Perce" comes from a word meaning "those with pierced noses", a name given them by people outside their tribe.

The Nez Perce met the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805, provided them with food, shelter and medicines, and sent them on their way. Today the Nez Perce nation is one of the largest employers in the area; they own a casino and many of their people work in the local industries.

I have no pictures of the heritage center displays (flash photos are usually discouraged in museums, although the woman at the receptionist's desk said I could have taken pictures if I'd wanted to). I did spend a fair amount of time to talking to the receptionist about an item in the cases called a "woman's calendar". It looks like a ball of string with knots tied at intervals. The receptionist explained that the string was given to a girl at puberty; she tied a knot in it each time she experienced a significant event in her life (got married, had a child, survived an attack on camp, etc.) In that respect, the receptionist and I agreed, it was more like a journal than a diary.

The receptionist explained that up until about 20 years ago, anthropologists had been more concerned with finding information on the chiefs and warriors -- in short, the male members of the tribe. However, they were discovering that they were missing large portions of information on tribal life and various activities. Now they are interviewing women to get the stories told to them by grandmothers, mothers, and aunts -- the female members of the tribe. Better late than never, I suppose.

After leaving Lewiston, we stopped at Cataldo Mission (also called Sacred Heart Mission) is the oldest standing building in Idaho. Run by a Jesuit order, the first church was orignally founded at a site about 35 miles away in the early 1840s. The mission was relocated here around 1848, when a new church was erected here, just outside Coeur d'Alene in northern Idaho. You can take a walking tour of grounds, which include the housing for the Jesuits (now the Welcome Center and museum), plaques describing the area and history of the church, a garden, outdoor kitchen, and the mission's bell.

On either side of the church's altar are two rooms with displays of the vestments warn at various times in the church's history (at right).



This is the altar itself. Services are still held here.






After a couple nights in Lewiston, we headed out for the last (we thought) pair of sites on our vacation. One was a gold mine tour in Kellogg. The Crystal Gold Mine is no longer a working mine (no one has dug there for nearly a century), but a lot of the equipment used for mining a hundred years ago is still in the mine, and our guide described the techniques as we walked along the path.

For example, at right is a candle holder that would fit on the side of a miner's hat. No hard hats here -- just a general hat that apparently had seen plenty of candles in its time.

At left is a quartz vein running along the mine walls. Miners looked for quartz because gold was often found in the same vicinity. Quartz comes in a number of different colors; this vein happened to be white.












Yes, that's us. No, we didn't strike it rich. Maybe next time....








In Wallace, we toured a the Sierra Silver Mine, which is still up and running, although the section we toured was not active. At left is our guide, who started by explaining various kinds of safety equipment. Back in the 1970s, the mine suffered a major fire, and some of the equipment in the picture was used for rescue, including the oxygen tanks and pump. If the wire near the top of the picture looks like a bird cage, that's because it is. Birds really were used as an early warning system for toxic gases in the mine.


At right is a simulation of rock blasting. The length of fuse on the dynamite determines the amount of time miners had to get out of the area once the fuse was lit. It could also be used to control the blast itself by cause different parts of the wall to explode at different times, essentially causing the shock waves to channel or limit the explosion. The white dots in the picture are just lights set into the tunnel wall; instead of an explosion, we just say flashing lights symbolizing the explosion.

Once the blasting is over, motorized equipment rakes the stones into a cart that then carries the stone where it can be separated. Stone containing the silver is sent off to be processed; stone that won't be used is sent back into the mine, where it is sealed up along with left-over stone and chemicals from the processing. This waste often contains hazardous chemicals and is sealed up to keep it out of the local water supply.

At right is what silver looks like just after being removed from the surrounding rock.



While in Wallace, we discovered the former local train station. This had been moved from its original location when the new highway had been put in (part of the deal with the DoT for allowing the new highway), and was used to display railroad items and other materials from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

At right is the station itself. At left is the station master's office, complete with his hat. The staff at this station often stayed right on the premises, so bathing and sleeping areas were installed.

Below is a sampling of the tools used to build and maintain the railroad.

Idaho, Part 6

I apologize for the fact that I've delayed posting the last of our trip, but once I got home, things got busy. However, the next two posts will finish the rest of the Idaho vacation

One of the main sights I wanted to see in Idaho was the Wolf Education and Research Center, located outside Winchester. The Center essentially takes in wolves or wolf/dog hybrids whose owners can't or won't care for them anymore. These animals don't know how to take care of themselves in the wild, and lack the instincts that tell them to stay away from people, so the Center provides them with a safe place to live, and an opportunity to study wolf behavior up close.

The Center essentially started with the formation of the Sawtooth Pack in 1991. Photographer Jim Dutcher wanted to do a documentary film on wolves, and spent several months living with the newly-formed pack in their original home outside Stanley, Idaho. This first pack consisted of one adult male, Akai, one adult female, Makuyi, and four pups (females Aipuyi and Motaki, and males Kamots and Lakota). As time passed, Makuyi was removed because of eye problems, and a year later, Akai went to a new home as well. At that point Kamots because the leader, or alpha male. More adults and pups were introduced: Motomo, Matsi, and Amani, all brothers in the same litter; Chemuhk, who would become the alpha female; male Wahots, and female Weyekin. The wolves' names, as you can probably tell, are taken from Native American languages, and generally describe something about the wolf.

Dutcher has produced both a movie, Wolf: Return of a Legend, and a book, The Sawtooth Wolves. There is also a documentary called Living with Wolves that presents much of the same information.

The pack moved to its present location in 1996.

Our guide met us at 4:30 in the afternoon. Morning and evening are the best time to watch for the wolves, which live in large, wooded enclosures that provide space to roam (and hide). Our first walk around the pen revealed no animals in sight, so we moved on to the visitors' center, which was built to resemble a Nez Perce Indian lodge (at left). The WERC is actually located on Nez Perce land, and the inside of the lodge doors feature hand-carved pictures (one shown at right) done by a local artist.

Our guide explained some of the wolves' biology -- what they eat (both in the wild and at the Center), their life cycle, their physical characteristics, and their relationship to some of the other animals that live in the same habitat. He also talked about conservation efforts to preserve wolves, which have been on the Endangered Species list for many years. One of the most publicized pograms is the release of timber or gray wolves into the Yellowstone National Park back in 1995. Idaho, Montana, and other western states have preserveration plans for wolves and other animals.

After the talk, we walked outside to the pens. I'm very pleased with the telephoto lens on my camera, as it got me some excellent pictures. We needed binoculars to actually see much of the animals, although after a while three of them came very close to the fence to sniff the air and see who we were. They must have been comfortable with our smells, because they hung around the fence where we could see them for several minutes.

Right now, five wolves live in one enclosure. They form the Owyhee pack and are named A, B, C, D, and E while the Center's staff works with them and decide what official names to give them.

We also walked out to the enclosure that houses the last two members of the Sawtooth Pack, but didn't see either of them. Our guide told us this is not unusual; both animals are getting very old, by wolf standards, and even the staff doesn't see them much any more.

After two hours with the wolves, we drove on up the highway to Lewiston. However, before I describe that, I have to related a couple of incidents from Winchester. First, while I was in the local post office looking for the location of the WERC offices, I met one of the few unfriendly people we discovered in Idaho. He had noticed my T-shirt, which had a picture of a wolf on it, and proceeded to tell me how much he hated wolves and wanted to see them wiped out, and followed it up with stories about how wolves kill deer and other animals. I wonder if he realizes that wolves are carnivores, and eat other animals for a living, and that there's a valid ecological reason why they do that.

The other story is one of our official "trip stories". We seem to get at least a couple of these on each vacation. They're the stand-out experiences we have each time we travel. This time, we were looking for a place to eat, since we had gotten into town in early afternoon but couldn't meet with our guide until evening. Winchester is a small town and has only a handful of places to eat, but we located one restaurant that was supposed to close at 2 p.m. However, the waitresses told us to come in and order, since they were going to be there until 2:30 anyway, and had another customer finishing his meal.

For desert, we asked for a banana split, which was listed on the board. The waitress told us they had no bananas. (Yes, I'm familiar with the song, thank you....) My parents just kind of looked at each other, and then my father went out to the car and came back in with a banana. (Yes, he really did have bananas in the car.) He handed it to the waitress, who gave him a disbelieving look, and then went off to make our banana split. (And it was good, too!)

And, as promised, I have a library photo from Winchester. We spent over an hour exploring the Winchester Public Library's collection of books and magazines after lunch was finished. It's a nice little library with a small children's section, adult and young adult fiction, and adult non-fiction, as well as a couple of computers. Picture is at right.

Idaho, Part 5

After leaving Hailey and the Sun Valley area, we spent a day traveling to Riggins, Idaho. Riggins is noted for outdoor activities, such as fishing, horseback riding, and river rafting, which is what I was going to Riggins to do.

I have to take some time to talk about our hotel. We stayed in the Riggins Hotel; the rooms really reflected the feel of the West, with knotty pine furniture and Native American designs on the bed throws. This was a nice, clean, comfortable little hotel run by a husband and wife team. We had two very quiet evenings there. I'm posting a couple of pictures to give you more of an idea of the accommodations.

My half-day river rafting trip was supposed to start at 1 p.m., but I had trouble finding the launching point. (If you ever have to get to Patterson Memorial Park in Riggins, it's down the hill behind the large parking lot on the river side of the road.) However, once I met up with my party, we set out. I had booked my trip through Epley's Whitewater Adventures, but my guide, Jake, actually worked for Mountain River Outfitters instead. Regardless, it turned out to be a pleasant and educational trip. I floated with two other visitors for nearly two hours on the Little Salmon River. Most of the rapids were fairly small, but we still managed to get wet several times. The photos I'm posting were taken from the road the next day; my camera is new, digital, and not waterproof, so I didn't want to risk having it get soaked.

Jake explained that the flats along the river were often the result of miners who built small homes and mined for gold and silver. Once a year they would take their findings down river to sell, then buy supplies and return. One particularly large flat was originally used by the Nez Perce Indians as a wintering ground for their horses; it was later used by miners and other settlers as a place to pasture their mules and horses. There were a few places where mining equipment could still be seen on the shores.

Jake also pointed out a local orchard and the sales stand where you can buy fresh fruits and vegetables. A number of people in the area apparently hunt and fish to supplement both their incomes and diets. River rafting, fishing, and other outdoor sports provide much of the employment in the area.

On September 9th, we packed up and headed north, stopping for a few minutes at the Whitebird Battlefield, where Nez Perce Indians fought U.S. Cavalry and infantry. This was the first battle in a war that eventually resulted in the Nez Perce being removed from their land and placed on reservations. We will see more of the Nez Perce on this trip in a later entry.

On our way up to the Winchester, Idaho, home of the Wolf Education and Research Center, we passed a place called Dog Bark Park. The first indication we had that this was something out of the ordinary was the giant beagle standing near the road. We just had to stop and get a picture. Then we had to stop for a longer period of time and talk to the owners. Dennis and Frances Sullivan had the beagle built as a bed and breakfast. Yes, you really can sleep there! (Check their website for details.) They're both artists. Dad bought one of the carved critters for sale in the gift shop (a buzzard), which he had shipped home so we didn't have to cart it around and try to pack it for the train.

The building has been featured in the book Buildings in Disguise: Architecture That Looks Like Animals, Food, and Other Things, by Joan Marie Arbogast.

Idaho, Part 4

Our destination on September 5th was City of Rocks, outside Declo, Idaho. (The official National Parks website is here.) We turned off the highway and took a back road to the south. The road got narrower, and finally we left pavement altogether.

City of Rocks has no admission fee. You just follow the road as it winds through fields and around massive rock structures. There are signs giving the rock formations' names, and some of the history of the area. (For example, part of the dirt road was an old stage coach route.) In 1843, City of Rocks became a landmark area for people traveling by wagon train to California. This was also part of the route to the Willamette Valley in Oregon.

We didn't stop much on this drive, so I'll just give you some pictures of the formations. There are a number of hiking trails and opportunities to rock-climb, but since I'm traveling with two senior citizens, I didn't take the time to do either.

We drove about 40 miles along this dirt road, which eventually swings around and heads back north, passing through Burley and back to the highway. We rejoined Route 84 and eventually left it again to head north to Hailey, Ketchum, and Sun Valley.

We stayed at the Airport Inn in Hailey, and finished off our evening driving through town to locate the local Roman Catholic Church and a gas station. We also did laundry. (Travel tip: take enough clothing for a week and do laundry at least once while you're traveling. Many hotels provide washers and dryers for a minimal fee, and you can get away with packing considerably fewer clothes.)

The following day it was north to Ketchum and Sun Valley. In 1935 and 1936, W. Averill Harriman, a lifelong skiing enthusiast, decided to open a ski resort similar to those found in Europe. The 1932 Olympics has proven the national popularity of skiing. Harriman asked Felix Schaffgotsch, an Austrian count, to travel the United States in search of a site for the resort. Schaffgotsch discovered Ketchum, a former mining town, and determined that it would be an ideal area.

Once the lodge was build and the skiing areas ready, Harriman invited celebrities to Sun Valley to promote it. Author Ernest Hemmingway was a frequent visitor. One hallway in the lodge is filled with black and white photos of celebrities who've visited, many several times. The picture above is of the main lodge. On the left is a shot of the main lobby. The picture on the right shows a pond in the middle of the little village of shops and restaurants around the corner from the lodge.

Idaho, Part 3

After spending the night at the Best Western in Idaho Falls, we set out with two destinations for the day: the Potato Museum in Blackfoot, and the Craters of the Moon National Park outside Arco. We missed our turn-off for Route 20 out to the national park, so we backtracked and ended up in Blackfoot first.

One of the first things people asked me when I told them I was going to Idaho was "What's in Idaho? Besides potatoes?" There's a good reason for that response; Idaho produces over 1/4 of the potatoes eaten in the United States.

The Potato Museum, at 130 North West Main Street, houses displays on the history of potatoes and potato farming, the standards for grading potatoes, and the development of new potato breeds. A room in the back holds some real life examples of farming equipment used in producing potatoes. By the way, the image above comes from the museum's website.

According to the displays, European explorers first found the natives of what is now Peru and Bolivia growing potatoes in the 1530s. It’s estimated that these people began cultivating potatoes around 2000 B.C. The picture at left is a set of miniature Peruvian farming implements. From Peru, the potato was taken to Spain, and from there it found its way to Portugal and Ireland, then to France, China and African, then to North America and Russia. Royalty grew the plant for its flowers, but soon creed that their subjects grow the potato as food.

It became especially well established in Ireland; the Potato Famine of the 1840s devastated the Irish population and caused a mass exodus to the United States. Potatoes in the US came from Ireland in the 1620s.

Most potatoes grown today are descended from the Russet Burbank potato, discovered and developed by botanist Luther Burbank in 1872.

Potatoes are usually grown in rotation with other crops, including wheat and barley. Once the other plants are harvested, the left-over parts are plowed back into the soil to provide nutrients. All farming was originally done by hand. By the turn of the 20th century, some equipment was horse-drawn, but much of the work was still done by hand. Today, most of the work is done by machines. At left is a horse-drawn planting machine. At right is a harvesting machine developed in the 1960s.

We grown certain varieties of potatoes for food, but “wild” potatoes are often used to breed new varieties with different characteristics, such as disease immunity. It takes about 15 years to breed and develop a new kind of potato.

Potatoes are graded according to shape, size, absence of damage, maturity, internal quality, cleanliness, and other qualities. #1 grade potatoes may be any size, but must be firm, mature (ripe), with firm skin, and so on. The picture here is of world’s biggest potato “crisp”, which is processed from dehydrated potatoes; a “chip” is sliced from a fresh potato and friend.

For the $3 adult admission ($2.50 for seniors and AAA members), visitors also receive a free box of dehydrated hashbrowns that can be eaten when you get home. There is also a nice little gift shop.

Our next destination was Craters of the Moon National Preserve, located outside Arco, Idaho. This park gives visitors access to miles of lava fields, either by car or on foot. Unfortunately, the day we were there they were paving the roads, so only the first 1200 yards of road was available. We made the most of it, though, by taking the .25-mile walk onto the lava beds and watching the movie at the Visitors' Center.

Park information states that there was volcanic activity in this area as late as 2,000 years ago. Unlike the usual view of volcanoes with a cone, the lava here is forced up through cracks in the ground.

Harold Sterns, a geologist, hiked across the lava beds back in 1923 with a friend. A dog named Teddy made the trip as well. Sterns' article on the area was published in National Geographic magazine in 1924, and that same year, US President Calvin Coolidge declared the area a national park.

Above, left, Mom and Dad read about the geology of the area. Above on the right is a picture of the lava texture at one point along the walkway. At left here are two tall columns of volcanic stone which are thought to be part of a volcano cone that was washed away during an eruption.


All that walking made everyone hungry, and since it was time to eat, we returned to Arco and stopped at Pickle's Place for dinner. Pickle's Place boasts its "Atomic Burger", named after the fact that Arco was the first town in the world to receive electricity from nuclear power. They also produce their own seasoning and we bought a jar to try when we got home. Out front they have a huge green rocking chair, which of course we had to try out.

We drove from Arco down to Poccatello to stay for the night.

Idaho, Part 2

And here we are at last! Our first views of Idaho are that of twisty, turning mountain roads as we make our way down Route 93. Pictures here are of the scenery along the way. As you can see, Idaho has its share of "Big Sky" moments as well.

















The road did snake off across the countryside. It reminded me of the poem "The Highwayman", in which Alfred Noyes writes of "the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor", although here it's fields of grass rather than a moor.















Our first stop in Idaho was at Yellowstone Bear World, outside the city of Rexburg. This is a game park that gives visitors a chance to see bears in their natural habitat. You drive through the park and the bears and other animals wander around outside your car.

I have mixed feelings about stuff like this. On the one hand, anything that educates people about animals and habitat is generally a good thing. It's also a chance to have people enclosed in a small area while watching the animals freely roam around outside. On the other hand, there seem to be a lot of bears in a relatively small area. I'm guessing that there are state and/or federal agencies that keep an eye on places like this to make sure the animals aren't being abused. But part of me really thinks the animals should be allowed to live out their lives in the wild. However, these bears are used to being around humans, and releasing them into the wild might result in them moving close to human habitation with the expectations that humans will feed them, and so on, which of course leads to a whole host of other problems.

At any rate, we had close encounters with several bears. I discovered my digital camera will produce film clips as well as pictures, so if I figure out a way to post one or two of those clips on here, I'll do so at a later date. In the meantime, though, I have some pictures for everyone's viewing enjoyment.

A number of other animals share the enclosure with the bears. Each area is penned off so the animals can co-exists in relative peace. At left are a small herd of deer; at right is a moose.

Just outside the park is a recreation area for visitors. Here you can see two enclosures which hold a group of bear cubs. The cubs have been removed from the main habitat because the male bears will kill them. The cubs are raised by the staff; visitors can sign up to help feed the cubs at various times.

Below are cub pictures:

The recreation area held a number of rides aimed at small children; the miniature train attracted my mother as well. As you can see, she and Dad had their turn on the ride. In the first picture, Mom boards the train, and in the second, Dad is seated in his car. I had a movie clip of this, too, but I think the batteries kind of died on that one.