When I got home from work on Friday we loaded up the jeep and headed to Wallace, arriving late that night.
Before picture of the upstairs bathroom
We weren't planning on doing any work on the house this trip, but the day before we left for Wallace, John sent an email saying that my parents were going stay at John's Wallace house over Labor Day. The next room in the house we need to remodel on is the upstairs bathroom. We hadn't planned to work on the bathroom until Thanksgiving or Christmas because my parents are coming for Labor Day and we don't want the bathroom torn apart. Now that my parents are staying at John's, we were free to start tearing the bathroom apart on this trip. Our plan was to leave the bathtub pretty much as-is and add bead board to the walls and install a new tile floor. Over 4th of July when David and his kids were staying at the house, everyone used the downstairs bathroom to take a shower. It was pretty clear that we'd need to add a shower to the upstairs bathroom. I took this picture on Saturday morning. The bathroom looks exactly the same as when we bought the house a couple of years ago.
Ready to tile
A few hours after I took the "before" picture the bathroom looked like this. Carolyn and I had removed all the fixtures, the baseboards, and the trim around the window. I used a grinder with a metal cutting disc to cut off the wall seam around the bathtub. Then I scuffed up the walls so the tile will have something to stick to. I needed a piece of drywall to patch the hole where the soap dish used to fit and and another piece to patch a larger hole after removing the cabinet above the sink. The hardware store in Wallace doesn't carry small tiles so we needed to make a trip to Coeur d'Alene for tile, wallboard, and other supplies.
On Saturday we found out about a human caused fire at the beach at Lake Wenatchee that spread to the woods and burned down four cabins.
Water tower ride
I took Eric's motorcycle for a spin to keep the battery charged up. I rode up past John's house to the highest street I could find. Eventually I followed a dirt road past an old house to a dead end. I noticed an ATV trail heading steeply up the mountain. I rode back home and got Carolyn and we came back on our ATVs to find out where the trail would lead. Perhaps this was finally a way to get up to the logging roads on the mountain above the town.
View from the water tower
The trail climbed steeply and briefly to a large water tower. I didn't realize there was a gulch back there. We rode down an old overgrown trail heading down Weyer Gulch. Eventually we ran into downed trees and turned back and headed back down to the house.
Lake Coeur d'Alene
That Saturday evening we drove to Coeur d'Alene to buy tile and other supplies. Then we went out for Mexican food and walked down to the lake.
The Boardwalk
We walked along the boardwalk that sticks out into the lake and loops around a lot of berthed boats before driving back to Wallace. On Sunday we went to church. We went over to the old gym that afternoon and signed up for the organized ATV rides for the week. As usual, I made chocolate chip cookies.
The group heading through town
On Monday morning I changed the oil and filter in my KLR motorcycle. Then I replaced the fork boots on my old KDX. One of the boots was ripped and the other was torn up from the chainsaw bumping against it. I had to remove the forks to replace the boots. At 9am Carolyn and I left with our group for a ride to Taft Summit. There were somewhere around thirty machines in our group. We took off through town to head up Canyon Creek.
Taking a break above Burke
We left the road at Gem and climbed up Grouse Peak mountain, cutting across the mountain's face until we were above Burke where the leader stopped so the group could take a break.
Following Carolyn
The group started off again and I followed Carolyn. We were about in the middle of the pack. We dropped down off the mountain at the electrical substation above Burke and headed up a dirt road to the Montana border at Cooper Pass. From there we headed down into Montana and came out on the road that leads to Thompson Falls. The group traveled on the road for a mile or two before heading up Crow Creek.
Carolyn on Taft Summit
We climbed higher and higher and eventually passed over the Coeur d'Alene divide and Taft Summit. I thought this was our destination and we'd stop, but no, we kept on going. I was hoping we'd stop and Carolyn and I would climb a short trail to the true summit.
Heading down the switchbacks
From Taft Summit we took a well-maintained dirt road down the mountain.
Topo map of the snaking road
I've seen the road we headed down on a topo map before and it looked like it could be challenging, but it wasn't. It was just hot and dusty.
Snowmobile warming shelter
We rode down to a snowmobile warming shelter, parked our machines and headed inside to eat lunch. Carolyn and I had just sat down to eat our sandwiches when the group leader heard on her radio that someone flipped their machine coming down that winding road. She asked for a few men to head back up the mountain with her. I ran out to hop on my machine, but it was completely blocked in front, back and both sides.
My ride back up the mountain
I saw a guy getting in a side-by-side and asked if I could go with him. I hopped in and he took off like he was racing up Pikes Peak. I had no goggles or helmet and with the dust from the riders ahead, I couldn't see anything. I simply held onto the crashbar as the driver 4-wheel-drifted around the switchbacks.
The injured man
After about a mile we arrived at a turn in the road (marked by a red 29 in the topo map a couple of pictures earlier). There were a few people helping an old man sit up in the middle of the road. No one saw what happened because everyone was riding far apart because of the dust. The first rider to encounter the old man found him face down in the middle of the turn with his machine on its side on top of the man and unconscious. He and the next rider flipped the machine off the man. We got the man to lay down and used a solar blanket to shade him from the hot sun. Using the leader's Camelbak and a towel, we kept the guy's head cool. The leader called 911 and miraculously got an answer, even though we were in such a remote area. The 911 dispatcher said she'd try to round up some paramedics in the small Montana town of De Borgia and send them up in a crash truck. Meanwhile, she'd send an ambulance from the more distant town of Superior, MT. Eventually, the dispatcher called back and said she was sending a single paramedic in a pickup truck from the closer town of Haugen. All of the riders behind the old man headed down to the warming shelter and four or five of us stayed with the injured man. After about 45 minutes the pickup truck from Haugen arrived and dropped off a woman paramedic. She assessed the man's condition. He was in a lot of pain and felt like there was a rock under his right side (there wasn't - his grandson, the guy in the yellow jersey, carefully felt underneath for any rocks). She took his pulse and blood pressure and we waited another 45 minutes for the crash truck from De Borgia to show up. Two guys drove the crash truck and they were dressed like paramedics, but it seemed like they didn't help much and sat off to the side smoking cigarettes. The woman paramedic had us roll the man on his side, then slide a backboard underneath, then carefully strap him down. She put a neck brace on the man. Another half hour went by and we could hear a siren. It was odd hearing a siren in the middle of the forest without a real road anywhere around. Meanwhile, a Montana state highway patrolman showed up in his patrol car, a Dodge Charger with highway radials. That must have been an interesting drive up that road. He was a cool young guy there to investigate the accident. There wasn't much evidence because no one had seen what had caused the crash. There didn't appear to be a rock in the road that the man hit. The crash took place in the middle of the road in the middle of the turn.
The injured man's bent Suzuki
What was clear from the bent up ATV was the machine rolled onto its right front corner. Perhaps the man was traveling too fast in the dust and came to the sharp curve, braking hard while turning, and rolled over the outside corner. The patrolman talked to everyone and we all waited for the ambulance truck to make its way up the mountain. Then we loaded the backboard on a stretcher and loaded all that into the ambulance. I had to climb in the back of the ambulance because it was on a steep hill, to pull the stretcher inside and lock it into position. Again, it didn't seem like the two guys that came in the initial response crash truck really helped. Once loaded and the ambulance on its way to the hospital in Superior, the rest of us rode back down to the warming hut. Since I came up the mountain with someone else, I was the only free rider left to drive the old man's machine back down the mountain. The injured man was 89 years old and from Missoula. He was at ATV Week with his grandson's family and two great-granddaughters, all on this ride. They were ahead of him waiting in the warming hut.
GPS track of the Taft Summit ride
The main group had been waiting at the warming shelter for two and a half hours while we helped the injured man. The group leader took us back to Wallace on the most direct route, but it was still a long way. The total ride was 80 miles with 10,400' of elevation gain. I learned about a whole area of trails between Mullan and Wallace that I wasn't aware of.
Jewel Gulch ride
On Tuesday morning before the ride, Carolyn helped me setup the tile saw in the carport. I mixed up a small batch of mortar and was able to install three rows of tiles on the bathroom wall before getting ready for the ride. Carolyn and I signed up for different rides today. She rode the tunnels to Avery and then back up Slate Creek. I signed up for the "Jewel Gulch and more" ride. I'm really familiar with Jewel Gulch (Carolyn and I cut out all the trees across the Jewel Gulch trail a couple of months ago) so it was the "and more" part of the ride that I was interested in. It was led by Dave Strough, a guy that always leads the most adventurous and technical rides (and the reason Carolyn didn't sign up for this one). At the start there was an old couple on a two-up ATV and a young couple in a 50" wide side-by-side. The leader tried to talk both out of the ride because the trail was so technical but neither could be talked out of it. I was hoping the old couple would bail because they were on yesterday's ride and rode really slow. I wondered how they'd ever make it up the technical Jewel Gulch trail. It turns out they did make it to the top of Jewel Gulch, but decided to turn back rather than continue on with the rest of the ride. The couple in the side-by-side did fine and rode the whole trail. This photo above from my GoPro shows how far I was leaning on an extreme off-camber detour around a root ball.
Plugging a flat
From Jewel Gulch we rode down a trail Carolyn and I had already ridden down to Twomile Creek. At the bottom one of the kids in front of me had a flat from a stick that punctured his tire and the group waited while it was being fixed. Someone noticed that one of my back tires was flat, too. I patched it with a plug and reinflated the tire with a pump I carry in my saddle bag. So far, we hadn't hit the "and more" part of the ride.
Heading up the Dot Creek trail
As a group we rode up Big Creek, past the Sunshine mine to a trail called Dot Creek. The group moved quickly and I was near the front of the group so I was never blocked by slowpokes. On one part of the trail the creek has diverted into the trail.
Child fell asleep
This man and his wife and child were on the most technical ride I did last year. Last year the child rode in a chest harness. This year she sat on her dad's machine. She fell asleep on the long climb up to the top of the Silver Mountain ski resort in Kellogg.
View of the group on Silver Mountain
Going the wrong way
On the way back down Silver Mountain the ride leader took us on this trail heading west. Eventually, someone behind me caught up and told me we were going the wrong direction. The same guy proceeded to chase down each of the riders including the leader, to turn the group around.
Eating lunch
The group turned around and we headed down a steep trail to the start of trail 16. Here we took a break and ate lunch.
Blocked by trees
Back on our machines we traveled on trail 16B for quite a while. Lots of steep, loose, and rocky climbs followed by the same kinds of descents. Eventually we came across these fallen trees across the trail. Our group is trapped on the other side. The group leader had a small chainsaw and he started working on the large tree.
Sabotage!
I climbed up the hill to see why this giant fir had fallen and it had clearly been cut so that it would fall and block the trail.
Finally!
The leader's chainsaw was dull. I looked in my saddle pack for my sharpening kit. I didn't bring my chainsaw or the sharpener. I found a new sharp chain, but it was too long for the chainsaw. I had a hatchet with me and another guy and I went to work on one end of the log. Eventually, someone else way in the back came forward with a sharper chainsaw, but its chain kept skipping off. After about an hour we cut both logs and rolled them off the trail and we were on our way again.
Elsie Lake
From Trail 16 we dropped down to Elsie Lake. Later on I'd find out how this lake got its name. After waiting a long time for the rest of the group to show up, we headed up a recently reconstructed trail to base of Striped Peak and then home via Osburn.
GPS track of the ride
We essentially did three rides today: Jewel Gulch, Silver Mountain, and Lake Elsie. The trip was 66 miles with 11,400' of elevation gain. I learned of a new trail in Osburn that starts at the water tank. When I got home I cleaned the air filters in both machines and replaced them with new K&N filters. Then Carolyn and I went up to John's house and installed a dehumidifier in their basement.
Raspberries
Our next door neighbors left Sunday for Oregon and they'd be gone for the week. They asked us to get their mail, newspapers, and to eat as many raspberries as we could from their bushes. Carolyn and I would go next door each evening and graze on the raspberries. They were delicious.
Gold panning
On Wednesday we were signed up for a gold panning ride. This was the ride Carolyn was most looking forward to. I had signed up in advance to ride as the trail dragger, picking up cones the leader left as bread crumbs and helping anyone who had problems with their machine. We rode up Nine Mile to Dobson Pass to Kings Pass down to Murray and then to Eagle Creek. At Eagle Creek Park there is a group of recreational gold panners who own a 2,000' section of Eagle Creek, including the gold bearing gravel. The guy in the photo above showed the group how to pan for gold. When he finished washing the gravel in his pan and was left with several large flakes of gold, I knew it couldn't be that easy. I ask him if he salted the pan with gold and he admitted that he had. Eagle Creek was where gold was first discovered in this area in the 1800's and over a thousand people lived her for several years before the action moved to Murray.
Carolyn panning
We dug earth and gravel from the bedrock near the banks of the creek. Carolyn panned her gravel directly. I carefully poured mine into this sluice. I dug and poured several buckets of gravel through sluice. I knew I was going to strike it rich.
Speck of gold!
After a couple of hours everyone lost their enthusiasm and gradually gave up. I opened up the sluice and pulled out the mat that's supposed to catch all the gold dust and flakes. I washed the mat in a bucket of clean water and then panned all those washings. All I got was this single speck of gold, not even enough to buy a TicTac.
GPS track of gold panning ride
After gold panning, everyone voted to ride home the most direct way on the road rather than take trails and dirt roads back to Wallace. I was all for it because I wanted to get home to continue tiling the bathroom. The great-granddaughters of the old man who was injured were on this ride today. I asked them how their great-grandpa was doing. When the ambulance got to Superior and he was examined, they found he had broken all the ribs on his right side, his scapula, his collar bone, and had a punctured lung. He was life-flighted to a bigger hospital in Missoula.
Parade
On Wednesday evening there was an ATV parade. We didn't participate, but I took a photo when the hundreds of machines came past our house. The parade winds its way to the park in Wallace where pizza is served to all the ATV Week riders. Carolyn and I walked over and ate pizza. One of the ATV Week coordinators asked if I could lead the ride up to Silver Mountain the next day. I thought about it for a few minutes and declined, not knowing the trails well enough to get up there. They asked if I could be the trail dragger and I agreed.
Union Pacific station in Kellogg
Around 8pm when it had cooled off a touch, and that's only a touch, I drove the jeep to Kellogg to drop it off to get the oil changed for the first time. I took my bike with me and rode back to Wallace.
Union Pacific route to Wallace
The ride back to Wallace was pretty along the South Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River. It was still super hot though, and I drained two water bottles on the ride home.
GPS track of the ride from Kellogg to Wallace
It's a pleasant 12 mile ride, gaining about 500' as the route heads up the Silver Valley.
Old mine ruins
The next morning Carolyn and I left on a ride to Silver Mountain. The tour leader was driving a side-by-side. The group rode to Osburn and then to Big Creek where we turned up trail 113. It had recently been regraded so it was an easy trail. We passed by several mine ruins on the backside of Kellogg Peak. Since I was trail dragging, I could stop and take photos and easily catch up to the group afterwards.
More ruins
Our group leader used to be a miner so when we'd stop, he'd tell lots of stories about the various mines we were seeing.
Colin
This kid and his family were on 3 or 4 of the same rides as I was. His dad and I got along really well. They live north of Coeur d'Alene near Sandpoint. He was always asking me funny questions like, "Would you rather work at Google or be an astronaut?"
Carolyn
Notice that Carolyn is wearing a flak jacket. Other than the kid above, no one wore any sort of protection, other than helmets, while riding their ATVs. I had bad dreams about the injured old man. If he had been wearing a chest protector, I bet his injuries would have been far less serious, if he had been injured at all. I convinced Carolyn (and myself) to wear chest protectors from then on out. Some folks mildly teased Carolyn, but I responded with, "I helped load the old man in the ambulance." Everyone knew about the old man. By now the old man was in the ICU in Missoula and on top of all his injuries, had pneumonia.
View inside the mine tunnel
View from Silver Mountain
Start of mountain bike trails
At the top of Silver Mountain there are lots of mountain bike trails. Each of the trails is clearly marked as easy, intermediate, or expert. I want to go riding here.
Expert trail
The sign says if you can't do this first stunt, don't bother riding this trail. I don't think I could do it.
A mine tunnel on the Dot Creek trail
Even though Tuesday's ride had taken us up to Silver Mountain, we went a completely different way on today's ride. We came down a different way as well, until we hit the Dot Creek trail. The trail is rough, rutted, narrow, and steep. At the bottom the trail leader told us that in his younger days, he used to drive his pickup truck up there to go hunting. The road has completely deteriorated and grown into a difficult trail, even on something as maneuverable as an ATV.
GPS track of Silver Mountain Ride
Today's ride was 53 miles. It wasn't that fun. I was tail dragging last in the group and Carolyn was in front of me. In front of her were two older couples from North Dakota, both riding two-up machines. Whenever the group started up, they'd wait a considerable amount of time before taking off so they wouldn't get dusty. They rode super slow and the whole group would have to wait and wait for them to catch up. Since we were behind them, we'd have to wait and wait and crawl slowly along. It wasn't a fun ride. When we got home late in the afternoon I rode my bike to Kellogg to pick up the jeep. It was 95 degrees. When I arrived at the dealer, I couldn't shove dollars into the coke machine fast enough to retrieve an ice-cold root beer.
Gold Hill
On Friday I was signed up to go on another technical adventurous ride with Dave Strough called "Reverse Champion." But first we went to a pancake breakfast at the high school cafeteria. When we arrived at the starting location, another official asked if I would be willing to trail drag a ride called "Lookout over Lookout." Since that ride was also tagged as an expert ride, I said sure. Carolyn wasn't feeling well so she decided to go home and not ride today. I was pretty excited about this ride because there were only seven machines in the whole group. That would mean we would move fast and wouldn't have to wait very long to regroup. As we pulled out of the parking lot those two older slow couples from yesterday's ride cut into the line and joined our group. My heart sank. The group rode up to Slate Creek Saddle to Moon Pass and then up to Gold Hill. From there we rode down a steep trail to Mullan.
The Lookout over Lookout at Point 6046
From Mullan we rode up an extremely steep and long trail to the lookout spot over the Lookout Pass ski resort. On the way up the mountain, one of the couple's Polaris overheated and we had to stop for 15 or 20 minutes for it to cool down.
Silver Cable Mine
We rode down into Montana passing the old ruins of the Silver Cable Mine. The tour leader got a flat tire and we took a break while he plugged his tire.
Looking out over Montana
Heading against traffic on I-90W!
We rode down to Mullan Pass and then down toward Mullan before turning up a steep trail. We popped out on westbound I-90. Then we rode on the side of I-90 against traffic, rode the wrong way on an on-ramp, finally crossing the bridge over I-90 at Lookout Pass. From there we headed down the old railroad grade to Mullan and then up a long long steep steep trail to Gold Hill. The ATV in front of me overheated again. At the top, the leader decided to break the group into two. Those that wanted to go with him would take the easy route (we had a wide side-by-side with us that had to go that way) and those that would go with me would go down the more adventurous way of Red Oak Gulch. The leader did his best to try and encourage the two slowpoke ATV's to go with me, even though it was a harder route. I was so glad when they decided to go with him on the easy route. Neither the leader nor me wanted the slow pokes with them. Only me and another guy went the more exciting route. We flew along the top ridge and down Red Oak Gulch. When we got to the bottom, I had another flat tire! I plugged the tire. When I started my ATV, the CVT light came on. That's the light that says something is wrong with the belt drive in the transmission. When the belt starts to go, it usually begins to go by fraying its edges. There are mechanical switches in the transmission to detect those frayed strands. When the machine decides the belt is about to self destruct, it puts the machine into limp mode and it won't go faster than 10 mph. Here I was trying to get home as fast as possible after poking along all day, and irony of ironies, I'm stuck going 10 mph. The whole group, including the two slow pokes that went the long easy way eventually caught up and passed me. I limped into our driveway, hot, tired, and defeated.
GPS track of Lookout over Lookout ride
The ride was 68 miles and 17,000' of elevation gain! When I got home I washed our machines and cleaned the air filters. I thought I'd have to take the transmission apart to replace the belt. From the manual I found out that the machine's computer turns on the CVT light after 100 hours. I googled a youtube video that showed me how to reset the light. That restored the machine from limp mode. Then I got busy tiling the bathroom. I finished the back wall and the tile trim around the window. Then I tiled the left side wall. That evening we went to the hosted BBQ at the park in Osburn. Carolyn brought a pot of her delicious baked beans. The club supplied hamburgers and hot dogs. By the time we made it through the food line, the beans were cleaned out. We sat and ate with a family from Astoria, OR. Over the week of riding, I noticed all the brands of ATVs. I would break down the 250 machine distribution like this:
45% CanAm / 30% Polaris / 10% Yamaha / 10% Suzuki / 4% Arctic Cat / 1% Kawasaki (only my machine and a Kawasaki ridden by the old man's great-granddaughter).
Tiling the right side wall
On Saturday morning I tiled the right side wall. I went to the high school for another pancake breakfast. Carolyn went later after she woke up.
Putting down cement board for the floor tile
After finishing the wall tile, I went to the hardware store for another 50 lb bag of thinset and a circular saw blade for cutting the concrete backer board for the floor. I cut the pieces to fit, troweled a layer of thinset on the floor, then placed the cement board in position and screwed the pieces down.
Tiling the floor
I started laying down the floor tile. I calculated exactly how much tile to purchase for the walls, but failed miserably for the floor. I'll have to finish the floor the next time we come to Wallace.
Burke pool
That night there was the final event of ATV Week, a steak dinner in the old high school gym. An entry to ATV Week in Wallace costs about a hundred dollars. That gets you five all-day guided rides, a pizza dinner, two all-you-can-eat breakfasts, a hamburger dinner, a steak dinner, and a couple of t-shirts. During dinner, prizes and trophies were awarded for the various events at today's competitions (I didn't participate, but Carolyn worked at them). They also handed out a lot of raffle prizes. Carolyn won a pair of tie-downs for a motorcycle or ATV. We sat across from an older couple that grew up in Wallace and still live there. The man told me lots of stories about growing up in Wallace. As a kid, he lived a short way up Burke Canyon and would hop on the once-a-day train to Burke to go swimming in the company pool up there. The pool is long gone. Carolyn told them we live in the Uhlman's old house and she asked him if he knew the Uhlmans. He said he knew several and recalled that the Uhlmans owned a ranch down on Slate Creek.
Fritz Creek and Uhlman Creek
I looked on a topo map and found a Uhlman Creek draining into Slate Creek. John and I must have looked down that creek when we were on Dunn Peak a few weeks ago. I emailed Jim Uhlman and asked if he was related to the Uhlman's that owned a ranch in that area. He wrote back:
My Grandfather came from Switzerland in 1889. He married my Grandmother in Wallace in 1907. She had come from Austria. They met in Wallace. My Grandfather worked at various mines and also for the Forest Service. He became aware of timber claims and/or homesteads. He had a timber claim near Elk River, which eventually became my Father's. He also had either a timber claim or a homestead on Slate Creek. This property eventually became my uncle Herb's. Herb did not see any value in it and let it go for back taxes. He was always sorry he did that. My Grandfather built a cabin and a barn or shed on the Slate creek property, which was located one half mile down from the junction at the bottom of the hill when you drive from Wallace to Slate Creek. My Grandfather was working for the Forest Service in 1910 when the fire burned Wallace and the whole area. He had a crew on the St. Joe divide above Wallace. Ranger Pulaski gave him permission that day (the day the fire burned the whole area - August 20, 1910) to take his crew to try to save his homestead cabin and outbuilding. They were not successful and laid in the creek during the fire but all survived. One of the men left his shotgun leaning against a stump and the shells exploded. Pulaski took the other men on the St. Joe divide down to the tunnel that you can walk to up the West Fork of Placer Creek. The Pulaski story is written along the trail and if you have not taken it I would recommend the hike. A little steep but a fun area. When I was a kid I used to fish in that little stream and bring home little fish. My Dad always said that my Grandfather made the first trail down Slate Creek. They named Fritz Creek after him (his first name) and Uhlman Creek after him. Both of these names appear on forest service maps. The creeks are farther down Slate Creek than where the homestead was located. Elsie Lake is named after Ranger Ed Pulaski's daughter. Her name became Elsie Pabst and the Pabst family lived in Silverton for many years. I actually went on a date during high school years one time with Elsie and Walter Pabst's daughter, Sandra. My Grandfather died June 16, 1940, the day after I was born, so I never got to know him. About 2 years ago I received a letter and my Grandparents Wedding Picture from Switzerland. The Uhlman family in Switzerland had not heard anything since the wedding picture was sent in 1907. They looked up the name on the computer and found my address. We have corresponded several times since.
Fire near Wenatchee
On Sunday we went to church and immediately after drove home. We passed a big fire burning south of Wenatchee. When we were 100 miles from Seattle the traffic came to a complete stop. From there until Hyak (the top of Snoqualmie Pass) the traffic inched along, stop and go. It's ridiculous. Leaving Redmond and heading toward Wallace is usually an easy driving experience, it's like a drop of water shooting out of a hose. Heading back to Seattle is always a mess, it's like trying to put all those drops of water back into the hose nozzle.
That was probably our last ATV Week, at least for a while. Having been to Wallace two weeks earlier for a week of 4th of July, it's easy to compare and contrast the two weeks. The bottom line is that 4th of July was more fun. Instead of one long dusty ride per day, we were able to go on several different rides, each catering to the group's abilities. It was no fun this week getting stuck behind very slow people, even though they signed up for expert rides. Honestly, 3 of the 5 rides were spoiled by going unreasonably slow. Rides that took all day during ATV Week, Carolyn and I could have finished in two or three hours. More importantly, though, I like to use the ATVs as a means to get somewhere. I'm all about the destination. During ATV Week the group buzzes by the things that interest me, such as old mines or summit trails. It'll be interesting to see if I change my tune between now and next year. On the positive side, Carolyn and I had a great time together in Wallace. I enjoyed working on tiling the bathroom. Finally, I learned of many new trails and areas we can explore in the future both on ATVs and on motorcycles.
(An update on the old man: Ten days after his accident I heard he has been moved out of the ICU.)
