Wednesday,
August 19, 2015 Drummond, Montana
Well,
it’s been a slow two days as I’ve driven east on I-90, caching all the way (ho,
ho, ho). Washington was breathtaking as I drove through the Cascades. I didn’t
know there were so many lakes. Then it settled down to farm and ranch country.
East of the drolly-named town of George, Washington the farmers have hung signs
on the fence lining the Interstate labeling what crops they are growing in the
fields beyond. Since I always find the agriculture of areas I pass through fascinating,
I loved this.
I
passed into Idaho, where I had still not found a cache. I had one downloaded
that was supposedly in the first rest area. I was actually along the Centennial
Bike Path over half a mile from the rest area. I dug out my belt pack and
walking stick and off I went. It was easy enough walking, and the cache easy
enough to find. The whole mile-and-a-quarter took me less than 45 minutes
including the cache hunting, signing the log, etc. Then I blew the next series
of caches because the next one east I had downloaded turned out to be on the
wrong side of the Interstate, and there was literally no place to pull over,
cancel the GPS navigating to it, and setting it to guide me to another. I blew
past all the pre-downloaded ones (which I am now doing on a day-to-day basis
depending on where I figure I’ll be heading the next day). It was getting on
towards evening so I stopped in Wallace, Idaho. Let me mention that I’ve always
connected Idaho with survivalists, paramilitary groups, and other far-right
lunatics. Wallace is actually a charming little town and the Wallace Inn is the
most marvelous place I’ve stayed. My room was actually a suite, with a sitting
area, a work desk, a vestibule with a drop-stuff-here table, and lots more
space than the entire master suite of my house. The pool was tempting, but I was
tired (my permanent state this summer). After an uninterrupted night’s sleep, I
enjoyed breakfast from the menu at the adjoining restaurant, instead of bolting
down the seldom-varying steam-table hotel breakfast buffet that has become
standard in America.
Then
I was totally defeated at both the caches in town that I’d downloaded. I know
right where the one at the silver mining exhibit was: Under the skirt of the
woman in the bronze statue group. But there were many tourists, and I couldn’t
imagine myself explaining to them why I was climbing onto the statue plinth and
shoving a hand up a bronze woman’s skirt. Nope. So Idaho is only represented by
one cache on my Found list.
Shortly
I crossed into Montana. A funny thing I noticed here is monogrammed mountains.
At first I couldn’t figure out the significance; a massive, time-consuming wilderness
version of graffiti, perhaps? But by the time I saw my fourth one, it verified
the hypothesis I was forming: They are near towns, and are the initials of
those towns. That’s probably useful for the many folks with private planes hereabouts,
but I think it actually is more of a chamber-of-commerce kind of thing.
I had much better luck with my pre-loaded
caches in Montana. All but one were MKC’s, as we call cache containers that
have been made by the Magnetic Key Case Company. The first one was kinda
awkward as a pair of male anglers pulled into the dusty creekside lot just as I
was carrying a milk crate into the woods. This is my always-in-the-car solution
to reaching caches hidden over 6 feet off the ground. I barely reached this one
even with the crate. But the funny thing was the men avoiding looking at me; I
think they’d concluded that women use a milk crate (with its convenient lattice
top) to sit on when urinating in the woods. At least I could be sure they would
not be coming into the woods to see what I was doing. The next was the sole
Earthcache on my list, “Ancient Paintings,” which had me examining ripple-layer
created sandstone to learn what forces shaped it, and this part of the world. I
think I can answer all the questions to earn me the find, but as usual plan
more research just to satisfy my curiosity. Number three was another key case,
this one on a guard rail just where the I-90 exit ramp crossed a cattle guard,
a normal phenomenon in the West. The clever part was, which “guarding device”
held the cache? After that, a find in one of the divided-for-privacy picnic
pavilions in a rest area was next. Once again the Garmin is distinctly
unstable. I’ve getting very tired of this. But persistence paid off, and just
in time. A swarm of Korean tourist kids took over that very section of the
pavilion, carrying, of all items for lunch, a gallon jar of hot peppers.
Shudder! I hope they had something else in addition. And lots to drink.
As
if this had not been enough activity for the day, I stopped at Kingfisher Fly
Shop in Missoula and bought my 2-day license and a dozen locally hot flies. At
the fly shop guy’s advice, I took exit 126 and took the road paralleling Rock
Creek, which was under warm-water restrictions until today, like most local
waters. I think the fish were still not particularly happy, as I got only two
hits on various Caddis imitations, and had one fish on for a minute or two on a
local searching pattern involving a peacock herl body under a parachute hackle.
This was a reasonably good fish, but I have no idea what kind of trout it was
since the hook pulled out. Wildlife watching was very good, though, with a
family of deer, a garter snake crawling across a gravel bar, and a pileated
woodpecker that landed in a tree less than ten yards away.
I
was already tired, and very hot, so I didn’t fish much more than a couple
hours. I was developing one of my headaches. I drove east and turned off at the
first hotel sign I saw. Which is how I ended up in a quiet little motel in the
sleepy cow-town of Drummond. Once again I’m lucky to have found Wifi, which is
certainly an improvement over my Florida trip two years ago.
Tomorrow?
Probably dip a line in Clark’s Fork creek, then a drive down Rt. 191 which
parallels the Gallatin River all the way to West Yellowstone.
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