St Maries ID, July 26-31

St. Maries is in northern Idaho, close to Coeur d'Alene. My family moved there when I was three years old and we moved from there when I was 13 and going into the 7th grade. The Satterlee family moved there with us and the Odekirks followed, all from Ogden, Utah. I have been back several times and it always feels like I am "going home."

This is Dutch Odekirk's home where we usually park our camper or 5th wheel when we go to St. Maries. It is a nice home and the third one that he has had on his property in St. Maries. It is on a mountain in the middle of the timber about ten miles out of St. Maries.

There is a meadow in front of his home and every evening we see deer crossing it. We didn't get very good pictures of them this year.

We took our camper on our pick-up to St. Maries this year, so we could take our pontoon boat. We took it out on the Benewah and Chatcolet lakes fishing a couple of times. This day, Terry caught a 25" Northern Pike. He has never caught a Northern Pike before. They are kind of a strange looking fish and they have very sharp teeth, so you have to be careful how you take them off of the hook. We took him home and barbequed him.

Dutch's granddaughter Melanie and her boyfriend Zack came with us fishing one day. They didn't fish much, but they jumped off the boat swimming, after I showed them how!

There were lots of osprey birds nested on poles and in trees around the lake. They would squawk at you if you got too close to their nest.

One day we went fishing with Dutch in his boat and we ended up in Coeur d'Alene Lake. Benewah Lake goes under a trestle and becomes Chacolet lake, and Chacolet Lake goes under a trestle and becomes Coeur d'Alene Lake. The St. Joe River, with actual banks on both sides, flows through the Benewah and Chatcolet Lakes and empties into the Coeur d'Alene Lake. It is quite a site to see. There is a Rails to Trails path that follows the old railroad line and goes over the trestle between Chatcolet Lake and Coeur d'Alene Lake. They have built the trestle up where it used to turn sideways for the boats to go through. Now the boats can go under it.

This Rails to Trails is about 60 miles long and would be really fun to ride some day on our tandem bike. It is one of our goals. It is supposed to be a really beautiful tail.

This is a log house that Dutch built on his property years ago when they first moved to St. Maries. I remember my Grandpa Fisher and Great Grandma Fisher living in it one summer. We kids would take turns staying for a week to help them because Great Grandma Fisher was almost blind. Dutch has wanted to tear down the "cabin" but his grandkids won't let him do it. I am sure glad he hasn't because it has a lot of memories for me.

As a kid, we would leave the house to go play and Mom wouldn't see us for hours later. We wouldn't get hungry because there were always so many berries to eat. They were all ripe when we were there--thimble berries, sarvice berries, and blackcaps.

There is an old school bus on Dutch's property. Dutch said that Gene Fisher (my Dad) brought it over one day and asked to park it there. He said he would be back in a few days to get it, and he still hasn't showed up! That must have been over 50 years ago.

We took a ride on the Benewah Road to where I lived most of the time we were in St. Maries. This is an old gravel pit that my brothers and I would go play on. We called it the "Rock Candy Mountain." For some reason, it seemed a little bigger when I was a kid.

When I was in the 4th grade, our house burnt to the ground. No one was home at the time and we lost everything we had but the clothes we were wearing. We went back to the old home site and could see no signs of the house, but we did find the well. We didn't have running water in the house until just before it burnt down, and we never had an indoor bathroom. Mom had to walk down a steep little hill to haul water up to the house. I remember always having a bucket of water sitting in the kitchen with a communal dipper to get a drink. The rule was that you had to drink all of the water you took in the dipper before you put the dipper back in the bucket. We took baths on Saturday nights in a big wash tub in the kitchen. Mom got the first bath, I got the second because I was the only girl, and then the my five brothers, followed by my Dad, as more hot water was added. We also had a chamber pot in our upstairs bedroom so we wouldn't have to go outside at night to the outhouse.

We had a hard time finding where the old house sat until we spotted these three old cedar trees (there is a third tree behind the one on the right in the first picture.) They were in our front yard. How we determined this was that in the middle picture it shows some metal sheets that were put on the trees, for what reason, I don't know. But here in the third picture are the same trees 50 years before, with the same metal attached. It was kind of neat to be able to see and touch those trees, knowing that they were the same ones in our yard and my Dad had put those very metal pieces on them! (Kind of soupy sentimentality!)

This is right in front of the trees where our house used to be. It burned down 50 years ago, this year.

Dad had taken our family album to his logging camp the week the house burnt down, to show these before and after pictures of our house, as he remodeled it. I am so thankful he had most all of our family pictures with him, or they would have burnt with the house! This is my brother Bill standing on the hill that went up to the Benewah road that we had to climb each day to get the mail and to catch the school bus.

This picture, with my brothers Ron, Frank, and Mike, was taken just a month or two before our house burnt down.

Here is my Dad and all of us kids: Roy, Dad, Mike, Frank, Me, Ron, and Bill--quite a group!

I couldn't resist putting in this picture of my Mom milking the goat, taken soon after we moved into the house. We always had goats. We drank their milk and ate their meat. They were never fenced in. There was a nanny who had a bell on her so we could always hear where they were. We would feed them grain when we milked them in the morning, they would go out on the hillsides all day, and then come back at night for their grain and milking. Sometimes we kids would go out where they were laying in the yard and squirt milk into our mouths straight from the goat's udder.

After our house burnt down, Dad built another house on our property. He used logs from off of our land to build the house. It was really nice and had running water from a spring down below it, but it still never had an indoor bathroom with a toilet because we never had a septic system. Dad sold our place and we moved from St. Maries when I was was 13 years old and just going into the 7th grade. The house was there for many years and then the owners torched it and put in a mobile home. My brother Frank went to St. Maries and when he went to see the house he was really disappointed because they had just burnt it down a couple of days before and it was still smoldering. So, this picture is especially for him!

This is what the knoll looks like today where our house sat.

There is a bridge over the Benewah Creek up the Benewah Road where Mom would drop us off to go swimming. Under the bridge it was usually over our heads, but there was a ledge we could walk on under the bridge, if we were brave enough. My brother Frank remembers walking on the ledge, falling off, and me saving his life! I guess he owes me one! The bridge still looks the same as I remembered it.

Dad sold some of our property to Art Satterlee and his family, who moved from Ogden to St. Maries with us. The "White House" was built (the one in the picture) and we were all impressed because it was fully plumbed. Art was a plumber by profession. Now his son Butch (Art, Jr.) lives in a little house across the Benewah road from the "White House" and the "White House" belongs to his sister Barbara (I was told, anyways). This is a picture of him and me. We are the same age and have kept in touch when we visit St. Maries.

We took a tour into town. There are a lot of things that are pretty much the same. This is the grade school that all of us kids went to, with a Lumberjack mascot. It was fun going to St. Maries and reminiscing. Terry was a good sport and just put up with me and all of my stories! I hope my brothers enjoy seeing some of the old pics.

We are now headed back home to Emmett for the rest of August, with one more trip to McCormick with my brother Bill. Then we will leave Idaho until next year.

Cascade - Poison Creek

We left Moscow on Saturday morning, headed back to New Meadows to pick up our boat where we had left it at our neighbor's cabin, and went to the Poison Creek Campground in Cascade where our friends, Ron and Sharon, had moved to finish out their camp hosting job.

We had a nice spot and what is even nicer when we camp by Ron and Sharon, is that they share their electricity with us! We had a good time fishing and visiting with them.

The mosquitoes got pretty bad towards evening, so we ate a meal and spent some time in our screen house.

Terry's brothers (he is the youngest) both came up and camped with us too. They look like the three Howard Musketeers!

Terry's brother Ron out fished everyone by catching this nice bass. He had a hard time deciding whether to eat it or turn it loose. He finally decided to turn it loose.

We left Cascade Lake on Saturday and we are headed to St. Maries, Idaho. Why St. Maries everyone asks. Well, I lived there for about ten years, from age 3-13, and we still have friends there. I will tell you all about it in the next post!

Moscow-Baseball

We left McCormick on July 15 to go to Moscow where our grandson was playing in a state All-Stars baseball tournament. We went as far as Grangeville and spent the night and then went on in to Moscow the next day. We got permission to park in the parking lot right next to the park where the games were held. We found a great spot under a tree, with a picnic table. There was also a nice playground for the kids. It was great because Sean played two games a day and we could eat and hang out where we were parked and didn't have to travel. Shay and his family stayed at my niece's home at night in Pullman, WA, which was only about ten miles away. She and her three kids came to the games each day. My brother, Ron, from West Richland, WA, also showed up for a game. That was an added treat to see him.

We would carry our chairs, blankets, and snacks from field to field to watch the games.

Sean was the pitcher/second baseman/fielder on his regular team in Idaho Falls. He played fielder/second baseman on the All-Stars team. He is a good little player. Their team had some tough luck in the timing of a couple of their games, but they did okay. It was a lot of fun being able to be their with all of them and watching Sean's games.

McCormick

Each year for the last 20+ years, my family has gone camping at McCormick Park on the Snake River at Hell's Canyon, starting the weekend after the 4th of July weekend. My brother Bill and his friends from Oregon started it and the rest of my brothers and sister and families have built on it. There have been years when we have had close to 60 people there all together. Two years ago, all of our kids and their families, except Jill's husband were there. This is the same park where Terry and I were camp hosts for two months last summer. This year, almost everyone pooped out on us. Only us, our daughter Jill and her family and some friends of theirs, and my sister Lorrie showed up on the usual date. I think my brother Bill will be there in August after his 40th !!! class reunion in Emmett. I think that maybe some of us will make a trip down while he is there. Bill forgot to tell us he changed the date! I am not sure he knows that he is the main draw for the get together. I hope someone tells him so that next year we will have more of our family and friends there again! I know that he reads our blog, so this is giving him due notice!

We still had a lot of fun, even with the few that came. Of course, it seems like there is usually a rattlesnake sighting! Jill's husband, Dan, did the honors of cutting it's head off. We found it slithering across the lawn down by the river.

Not all of the kids were brave enough to touch it. But, we can always count on Jill's son, Boe. He seems to never be afraid of things like that.

The fishing was great! Even 4-year-old Kamber could reel those crappie in one after another. We had a big fishfry one night and still took fish home. The pontoon boat is always a great hit on the Snake River. You just have to remember to "duck your head" as we go under the bridge going up to Brownlee Dam. We haven't lost anyone yet going under it, but there is always a first time. As the grandkids get older, they kind of test Grandpa's theory that there just may not be enough room to go under it unless everyone ducks their head!

One hot day we took the boat out and found a nice calm spot. Almost everyone jumped in and got cooled off. Dan and Jill took the plunge together.

Typical of Boe, he did a fancy sumersault into the water!

Kamber was a little more skeptical about getting in. She did eventually get talked into it, though.

They told me the water "wasn't too bad after you got into it." Don't ever believe anyone when they tell you that! It was VERY cold, but refreshing. We couldn't talk Terry into getting in. I think the climb back up into the boat worried him. Thank goodness he was still on the boat to pull the rest of us up!

This is a typical picture of my sister Lorrie and Terry and the main activity of the day, besides eating. We are looking forward to going back in August when Bill gets there, and hope to have a lot more there next year.

Cascade-Blue Heron

After getting hom from Girls Camp at Sagehen, we spent a couple of days in Emmett. We enjoyed having Sunday dinner at the Manwarings. Hopefully, someday they can join us on some more of our adventures. They are supposed to be retired, but we are beginning to wonder! We then left for Blue Heron Campground on the lake in Cascade.

Friends of ours, Ron and Sharon Vickery, are camp hosts at Blue Heron Campground. They invited us to stay at the park as their guests. We had a really nice time. Ron showed us how to catch perch and we had plenty left for both of our freezers after the fish fry.

Our son Ryan and his family--wife Lori and kids Wesley, Ryley, and Chaz--came up and camped with us for a few days. One of the funnest things we did was watch the fireworks set off at Cascade over the lake, in our pontoon boat out in the middle of the lake. What a sight! It was really dark when it was over. The light on the back of our boat is no longer there, so we had to hang a lantern over the back and then use a flashlight to find out spot on the bank where we moored. It must have worked because we had another boat follow us in, using our lights to find their spot. There were so many boats on the lake that it looked like it was on fire with all of the boat lights heading back to camp after the show. I think this will be a really memorable 4th of July for us.

There are a lot of sailboats that use Cascade Lake. In fact, they had a big race the day we left. A lot of them have cabins in them and are self-contained. One year, Cascade was able to get a grant and they put in a floating dump station for boat holding tanks. We went out and took a close look at it.

We took a boat ride one day and Ryan decided to jump in to cool off. Wesley pretty much will do anything his dad does, so he jumped in with him.

Then Ryan talked Chaz in. He thought that was pretty cool. Hopefully he won't think he can just jump off of Grampa's boat any time we are out on it!

He had to talk a little harder to get Ryley in, but he finally succeeded.

The Blue Heron campground used to be used only for day-use, but they changed it an now allow a few RV's to park, and a lot of tents. In fact, on a busy weekend, there get to be almost too many tents. But, we put our tent up for the kids to use and then put up our screenhouse to keep a little space around us. It worked well.

Ryan and Lori have moved a lot during the time they have been married. Hopefully, this is the last move. When we got back from Cascade, Ryan went and got the moving truck and they filled it with all of their stuff. Ryan has a new job in Payson, AZ, where Travis and his family live. He will be the Athletic Trainer for their high school. Hopefully, this will be the last move they will have to make for a long time. We wish them good luck!