Idaho: Wallace and Coeur D’Alene

22nd July – 26th July 2023

Our ‘road-of-the-moment’, the I-90, swept us out of Butte and through Montana and the foothills of the Rockies. This was one of our longest days on the road and we did 240 miles of mostly of gentle downhill until we hit one of our last major climbs of the trip, Lookout Pass. The summit of the pass is very close to the state line and we entered Idaho and our 4th time zone of the trip. Now we were in Pacific time. Like many states Idaho has a panhandle, its jutting up to the North, and the I-90 takes only 73 miles to cross it. We had two stops planned.

Our first stop came at the bottom of the hill, in a town called Wallace. Founded in 1884, Wallace was a very rich town once upon a time and was known as the Silver Capital Of The World. It sat at the hub of Silver Valley which, at it’s peak of production, supplied 21% of the world’s silver. It is also notable as it is the only place in the USA where the whole historic district of the town is on the National Register of Historic Places. This was a brilliant and crafty move by local lawmakers in 1979 to protect the town from the proposed re-building of the highway through this narrow valley. The original plans had the highway carving through the land where the town sits and this would have destroyed many historic buildings and likely killed the town itself. By getting the whole area on the register it was protected from any interference from rebuilding the highway and the whole project had to be revised. Now the highway sails over the town on an overpass and the town survives and thrives.

Our small RV park was very close to town and co-located with a bar and grill. It was the only one, honnest! We arrived on a very hot afternoon, set up camp and decided to stroll into the historic district to see what was going on. A Gay Pride festival – that was what was what was going on. It was a small affair, which was in the ‘Family Fun Day’ stage of proceedings, with stalls and a tiny music stage set up on a closed street in the town centre. We had missed the earlier parade and apparently there was a pub crawl later on in the evening. Despite being the filling in the liberal Pacific NorthWest club sandwich of Washington, Montana and Oregan, Idaho is generally fairly conservative in its leanings. The older chap that checked us into the RV park was a bit bemused by the choice of Wallace for the event, and I suspect that he was not alone in his opinion. It looked like much fun was being had by the Priders and there were a few outlandish outfits to give the locals something to be challenged by.

Our short and sweaty stroll across to the other side of town brought us to a fantastic, unexpected and very welcome discovery: Wallace City Swimming Pool. This looked amazingly inviting, like an oasis in the desert and we quickly nipped back to Tin Can to get our swimmers. Not only was it a well maintained, clean and well staffed facility, but it was also free. FREE! It is funded by charitable donations and grants and has been a part of Wallace life for generations. We spent a very relaxing hour floating about and considering how hot it was, it was remarkably under utilised.

The next day it was forecast to be hot again so we set off reasonably early to do a hike. This was called The Pulaski Tunnel Trail, an uphill route through the forest. The endpoint was the tunnel entrance of an old silver mine that played an important part in saving many lives 123 years ago. In 1910 a combination of severe drought and hurricaine force winds fanned a terrible wildfire known as the Big Blow Up. Over a period of only 2 days and nights this burnt through 3 million acres of virgin forest in this area. Ed Pulaski was a forest ranger who was up in the hills supervising a gang of men when it became obvious that their lives were all in peril from the approaching fire. Using his knowledge of the forest he led his men to the tunnel, the only place they were going to be able to survive the blaze. They made it just in time and he only lost 5 of the 45 men he was leading. He himself suffered burns, smoke inhalation and temporary blindness and was hailed a hero for his actions. Pulaski is also widely credited for inventing the ‘Pulaski’ in 1911. This is a half mattock, half axe firefighting hand tool that most of us would recognise.

The trail itself was about a 4 mile there-and-back hike from the trailhead with the endpoint being the tunnel entrance which was so low key that we nearly missed it completely. We also walked from the campsite to the trailhead, which added another 2 miles each way to our efforts so by the time we got home we were pretty hot, sweaty and tired. Nothing that another FREE loafing session in the pool couldn’t fix though!

It may not surprise you that we did partake in a few beers and a meal at our local hostelry. We would not want to disappoint……

The next day we left Wallace early and did a short backtrack of our steps, climbing back up to the top of Lookout Pass again. Here was the main reason that we had opted to stay in Wallace, its proximity to The Hiawatha Trail. This is a very wonderful fifteen mile long cycle trail that follows an old railway line through the forest, over trestle bridges and through tunnels. Starting in Montana and finishing in Idaho (with their different time zones), it is a private venture so there is a modest fee to ride it, but it was fantastic and well worth the money. A few folk (mostly on e-bikes) cycle it both ways but most people opt to only do the downhill direction and there is an efficient shuttle bus service that returns you from the bottom back up to the top where the car park is. They recommend not to take RVs up there but we ignored the advice and arrived early enough to find a Big D & TinCan sized parking space. The ride starts with a 1.5 mile tunnel. This was cold, wet and of course, very, very dark. Our rented bike lights gave us plenty of visibility and it was a surreal fifteen minutes of a cruising along in the dark, splashing through the muddy puddles in a strange bicycle convoy of riders of mixed abilities and anxiety levels, at this stage of the day all going the same direction as us. The accoustics were amazing and there was a cacophony of screaming, singing, whooping and bike bells. By the time we emerged back into daylight again we were filthy, as was everyone that didn’t have mudguards.

From here it was a glorious, easy, barely-needing-to-peddle downhill with amazing views and lots of places to stop and appretiate it all. We encountered some little friends on the route that were so disconcertingly tame that they completely freaked me out. Chipmunks are usually very skittish but these had obviously learnt that humans have food and some might feed them. They were at every obvious stopping place so we had to be a bit inventive with the location of our mid-morning breakfast picnic.

I decided that the mid-point of a trestle bridge would be perfect and that we would not be bothered by the very insistant critters. Nick, however, has a morbid fear of heights (in certain circumstances, the vagaries of which are a mystery to me) so he wasn’t too happy. Maybe the pleasure of eating an egg and bacon roll whilst experiencing his fear will be of important psychological theraputic benefit. Anyway, we remained chipmunk-free and met one of the volunteer trail wardens who stopped to chat to us. During this interlude another group of 4 stopped and asked us if we were from Conneticut. We said no and asked why they wanted to know. They had found a Conneticut drivers licence on the trail and they were asking everyone thay met, trying to reunite it with its owner. The warden took on the task, and the licence, and the group cycled on. Five minutes later a chap cycled up from the downhill direction and declared that he was the owner of the licence and that he had met the group of 4 who advised him that the warden, who we were still chatting with, had his licence. Bingo! A happy ending to a minor drama, all played out on a trestle bridge. The amusing thing in all this is that Mr R Ford, the licence owner, was a big 6ft 2in Black guy and possibly the photo on his licence might have given a clue who it belonged to. That is sort of the point, after all.

We continued our cycle and after more miles of effortless downhill, great views, a few more short tunnels and scary bridges we sadly reached the bottom of the hill. We waited in line for the first shuttle of the day at 11.45am and squeaked ahead of lots of other people in bigger groups as we were shoe-ins for the last 2 seats. The bus was an old repurposed school bus and it lumbered back up the gravel road, making us sweat with its cornering on hairpins with steep drop-offs. The bus ride only took us to the downhill end of the long tunnel that we started with and the return 1.5 mile trip back through it to the car park was equally dark, wet, muddy, cold and noisy, but now it was busier with two-way traffic. The advantage of having your entire home in the carpark is the ability to change into dry, clean clothes in privacy and put your dirty ones straight into the laundry basket. We returned our rented lights and got back on the road, the ever present I-90. This took us down the hill from Lookout Pass, back past Wallace and along the 50 miles to our last stop on this stage of our adventure, the exotically named Coeur D’Alene.

Coeur D’Alene, pronounced Cor D’Alene (not the french way -this got us some odd looks), and often abbreviated to CDA, is named for the local native tribe that was probably given its french name by Canadian fur trapers. It is a very delightful lakeside city of about 50,000 people and is only about 30 miles from the much larger (450,000 pop), and a smidge less delightful, Washington city of Spokane. Judging by the lakeside real estate prices, the number of big boats in the marina and the selection of shops and eateries on the mainstreet, there is some money here.

Our lakeside camp was just slightly out town and had a reasonable sized ‘beach’. It was sunny and hot again and happily our site had a nice shade tree, which was good because the stiff breeze made deployong our awning unwise. By the time we had set up and hosed the layer of dried mud off off the bikes it was definitely time for a swim, so we donned our swimmers, grabbed our towels and headed to the lake…just in time for the sun to go in. The lake was not what you would describe as warm, but it was tolerably refreshing. Unfortunately once we were in the wind and lack of sun made it too cold to get out. We got chatting to a couple who were comfortably dry and warm as they floated about on their respective kayak and paddleboard and we slowly slipped into the mildly hypothermic body temp range. It had been a long time since I had felt so cold (tunnels excluded). We extracted ourselves from both the conversation and the water and headed home to warm up. Once dried and dressed we were instantly too hot again and we installed ourselves with snacks and drinks under our shady tree. As we watched the world go by,another strolling couple stopped to chat and we got on so well with them that after nearly half an hour of conversation we had provisional plans to go out for dinner with them the following evening.

The next day we spent the morning and early afternoon on admin and doing a few chores like laundry and having confirmed our dinner arrangements with our new friends, we headed into town on our bikes to explore. There was a great cycle lane along the lakeshore that took us from our camp to downtown. It went through the university campus and along an extensive lakefront park with its long city beach and then to the marina. It struck me as being a thoroughly pleasant place to live or to come to study although possibly it might not be so attractive in the middle of winter.We parked the bikes outside the restaurant that we were going to later and strolled around downtown. It was all very classy but not very extensive. This meant that we had overestimated the time our explorations would take and we were left with about 90 minutes to kill before our dinner date. We spent most of this sat in a lakeside bar with a drink, being entertained by watching kids jump off the dock into the water and judging the boaties tying up and coming into the boat ramp . The wind was so brisk that it blew the foam off our beers.

Finally it was dinner time and we met Blaine and Connie at the brew pub as arranged. They are Californian residents that are newly retired, have hit the road on their first long trip in their trailer and are loving it. They had spent the day doing the Hiawatha trail on our recommendation and had come home equally tired happy and filthy. We had a great evening with them and the food was almost incidental to the constant and uninterupted conversation. They were very good company. It was soon nine o’clock and dusk was suddenly upon us and we realised that we had to cycle home before it got too dark. But No! Our new friends had driven to town in their truck and it was a simple thing to throw the bikes in the bed and give us a lift home. Brilliant. We bade our farewells after they dropped us off at our site and although there is a very small chance we might catch up with them in Washington in August, there is a much bigger chance that we will never meet them again. These fleeting friendships are one of the joys of this sort of travel. There is a level of openness and honesty of exchange that one can have with people with which one has no past and an unlikely future.

So this was our second of two nights in Coeur D’Alene and with our next destination being our friend Lori’s place in East Wenatchee in Washington, we realised that there was a possibility that this would be our last night sleeping in the Tin Can. This was too abstract and too emotional to consider at this time, so we didn’t dwell on it too much and slept quite well. The next day took us into Washington state and across an unexpected plateau full of vast swathes of grain. Everywhere you looked there was a combine harvester plodding through the fields, kicking up massive dust clouds and the landscape didn’t change for nearly 150 miles. After a total of 850 continuous miles of cruising up the I-90 we finally parted company with this epic highway and the final 35 miles of our journey into East Wenatchee followed the equally epic Columbia river up its valley and grain gave way to fruit. This area grows masses and masses of cherries, pears and apples and is dubbed the Apple Capital Of The World. Coming back to Washington, and specifically back to Lori feels a bit like coming home. This was where Tin Can Travelling all started and as we know it now, this is where it would come to an end.