June’s Big Adventure: Finally the Scablands!

OUR BIG SUMMER TRIP!!!
Every summer we go on one big 9-10 day trip.  This year’s turned out to be one of our favorites!  Here are the pictures (too many, I know), and a little commentary — to help us never forget this very fun time together.

IDAHO

Day one was mainly focused on just trying to get some miles behind us, but we did manage one super fun stop — the Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot, ID:



We learned lots about potato production, and even got to do a virtual reality trip inside a big harvester doing a potato harvest. That was cool!


We couldn’t leave without indulging in their perfectly prepared, super fresh french fries


and we had to buy Jac a funny potato shirt (which ended up being too small for him….so new shirt for me!)


We spent the night in a cheap little motel (clean tho!) in Idaho Falls, and the next morning….

MONTANA

Montana is beautiful!!  Driving thru the countryside was just as memorable as our destinations.  Here are some pictures we took en route to various stops:


 
During one particularly scenic drive in Montana — through the Bitterroot Valley — this little drama was going on so I didn’t take any pictures. (We did make it to a tiny little town’s gas station…with four miles to spare!)



Here’s a shot from online of “the Bitterroot Valley Scenic Drive” (Hwy 93).  Gorgeous!

 

Bannock Ghost Town
This was a fun little stop!  Bannack is a former gold rush town that really takes you back into the 19th-century frontier.  It’s shockingly well-preserved, with over 50 original, not refurbished structures still standing, and most were accessible to explore inside!  Here are some shots of this memorable little bit of time travel:









I especially loved seeing all the wallpaper, often several layers thick! 

Next up was a quick stop at Big Hole National Battlefield, which commemorates the site of a bloody clash between US troops and the the Nez Perce War. The attack happened at night while the Nez Perce were sleeping, resulting in nearly 90 Nez Perce killed and 31 U.S. soldiers too.

We weren’t there for long, really just to take in the view onto the field and get a quick rundown of the battle. It was kind of a sad little stop. It did, however, get us another stamp for our National Parks System book. We love that!  🙂


Still en route to Missoula, we drove through the cute little town of Darby, where we stopped for lunch. 


Darby’s small Main Street is so ‘quintessentially Montana’ that the tv show Yellowstone
(with Kevin Costner) is filmed here. We even drove right by the
entrance to the ranch where the show is shot (“Chief Joseph Ranch”). We don’t
watch the show…but maybe we should. 🙂

We didn’t explore here much. In fact, I stole the shot above from online because I didn’t really take a good shot of the cute little downtown. Here’s a few I did take:


In the end, the best part of Darby was Jac’s lunch. That guy can make even a simple sandwich absolutely delicious!


After a few hours more driving, we finally arrived at our Airbnb in Missoula. Here’s some pictures from the listing. It was ‘charming’ as advertised, but not really our speed.

The problem was…it was clearly is a space that the owners
use daily whenever they don’t have guests. It was just a little too intrusive, too personal!  And the bed was TEENY. And there wasn’t really anywhere to
sit and eat or play a game.

 

 

The
weirdest part was that it was located on the second floor above a dance
studio — with no door between them and we weren’t allowed to lock the
door.  What?  Between being someone else’s living space AND being part
of a public dance studio….   No. Wrong. 

 

But we made it work.  Despite it all, we
ate VERY well:

 



And we got deep into our big trip Mexican Train tournament:


The best part of the airBNB wasn’t the building itself, but the location. It was RIGHT across the street from the Rattlesnake River nature preserve. We had fun walking along the river 
 
 
and finding the “perfect” rock to commemorate our time in Missoula. Meet “Edvart.”  I had to scramble down a riverbank and step across stones in the river to get this unique rock, but…hey…anything for Rock Jac. 🙂 



(Well shoot, it’s January of the following year and I’m just now seeing that I never finished writing up this entry. So…I’ll finish it now but it’s just gonna be labeling stuff with no added commentary. Bummer. And I’m not going to edit it down like I usually do. So, expect lotsa pix!)
 
Deciding Edvart was really a possessed rock (look at that face) and had to be returned to the river!


While in Missoula, we visited the Butterfly House & Insectarium. That was VERY cool! 















Exploring downtown Missoula:
 




En Route to Idaho

Stopped in charming, historic Wallace

the self proclaimed center of the universe! 





IDAHO

After a few more hours, we crossed the border into Idaho and stopped for lunch and a tour of Cataldo Mission, Idaho’s oldest building.

 

It has such a charming old interior:

and was surrounded by stunning beautiful scenery:


 and fruit trees with fruit that we picked and ate 🙂 

  

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

For our time in far northern Idaho, we stayed at an AMAZING airbnb–the best we’ve ever stayed at! Here are pictures (from the airbnb website, but this IS what it looked like!):








We spent a lot of time just hanging out on the balcony and soaking in all that amazing scenery!







We did manage to pull ourselves away long enough to do a little scenic driving:



(although we did get stuck behind a road stripper for over an hour…argh)

And we went on a fun e-bike ride along the Trail of the Couer d’ Alenes:










 (And then got stuck behind the road stripper AGAIN going in the opposite direction!!!)


EASTERN WASHINGTON

We then drove west through eastern Washington and LOVED exploring the area and all checking out all the large scale farming!

 
 
  

 
including stopping to buy some of the freshly grown fruit at a local stand:



At one point, we kept seeing apples all over the road and realized an over-full truck must have been spilling them as it drove. So, we stopped and picked one up and had a little free mid-drive snack. 🙂


We did a lot of driving but it was beautiful and interesting…so it was worth it!

At one point we stumbled across this scene and stopped to explore:


En route, we also drove through Ritzville, Washington. I had been there before with Daniel, and old boyfriend who was from the area and his parents owned this cool old Bed and Breakfast.  We drove through the tiny town and I snapped this photo to send to Daniel but then never remembered to do so. Still, it was fun to revisit and remember that trip!

 More beautiful driving…

And more farmland…

The Scablands!
The real reason we went on this trip was to see the Scablands. Jac has wanted to see this glacier carved landscape for YEARS!  That was next on the trip. Here are some pictures of the different sites in the Scablands area. Unfortunately, the immense scale is entirely lost in small photographs (and even hard to see in person — on the ground at least), but I’ll post them anyway. 

Dry Falls State Park
Home to a massive cliff that was once the largest waterfall on Earth during the Ice Age. Seeing it in person really help show how roaring meltwater carved the landscape that is now left dry and dramatic.


For scale, Jac is at an overlook in the right side of the picture (in blue). 

 

Northrup Canyon (off Grand Coulee Lake)
We went for a short hike in this immense canyon.



(In the next two pictures, Jac is in blue in the bottom left….for scale).




Drumheller Channels National Natural Landmark
We just drove through this maze of rocky channels carved by Ice Age floods.


Grand Coulee Lake & Dam
We made a quick visit to Grand Coulee Dam — the second largest concrete dam in the world, after China’s Three Gorges. (Interestingly, even though it’s much larger than Hoover Dam, it didn’t seem as impressive. That’s because Grand Coulee Dam is very wide and squat, while Hoover Dam is tall, curved, and squeezed into a narrow canyon, which makes Hoover feel more dramatic and towering even though it’s actually smaller overall.)



We explored the dam’s visitors center:



and then headed to Palouse Falls, which stunning and so very underrated in travel materials about this area! 



Here’s the view UP the canyon in the other direction:


 
 
 And here’s a more close up view of the falls. So pretty!!!
 


And there’s Jac on the left hand side for scale again. 🙂


While there we had some wildlife encounters



And played the lottery scratch offs that we bought that morning. (We won 70 million dollars!!!)

Our home in Eastern Washington
We stayed at a little cabin in Wilbur, a tiny farming town in eastern Washington.  Here are pix of our cabin and time there:





But don’t be fooled by the cabiny vibe…

IRL, the cabin is at the end of an RV park and surrounded by farmland (ie: grain mills in the background that were nowhere to be seen in the pix online when I booked it.)  

View out the back window:

 
That’s okay tho. We liked it there. It’s just funny and out of place!  Here’s more cabin shots:

We played A LOT of Mexican Train on this trip! 







(Told you I wasn’t going to edit it down. LOTS of pictures!)

Our last stop before leaving Washington was an uneventful Manhattan Project museum, which covered the secret World War II effort to develop the first atomic bombs. We dragged ourselves through the exhibits there:

 

and then decided we ‘might as well’ check out the ‘old bus’ parked in the parking lot like a side note. And that was AWESOME.

The interior has been preserved to reflect what workers and scientists would have ridden during the Manhattan Project and early Cold War years.  And the advertisements lining the top provided such a fun and entertaining window into the look and messaging about nuclear power during the 40s and 50s:





We give that bus a big thumbs up. 🙂


OREGON

En route to our home for the next few nights, we stopped in the charming city of Pendleton, Oregon (famous for the Pendleton Rodeo):

 

 for a yummy Mexican lunch in the downtown area:

 

and to experience the Pendleton Underground Tours. Whoa, that was interesting!  We spent over an hour roaming through rooms used for most illicit activities (like gambling, bootlegging, and prostitution) but also for World War II game centers and for housing the Chinese immigrants who were outcasts at the time.

Here are lots of pictures, probably not in a logical order. Sorry. 













 
 



 

Our Wallowa home for a few days

We stayed at a cute little mom and pop motel in Wallowa. We love our mom and pops.

 

 

  

While in this charming area of eastern Oregon, we drove part of the Wallowa County Barn Tour and saw picturesque rural scenes like:







and we visited the adorable little town of Joseph:


We drove around beautiful Wallowa Lake:


and even had some putt-putt fun at the adorably kitschy little miniature golf place along the shores of the lake.




We both played stunningly well (he he) and in the end it was a tie. Jac won one and I won one.  And we left knowing that more mini golf will be in our future! 

 

And just like that, the trip was over. The next day, we made the long drive home, safely, and another epic Jac and Betsy adventure was in the books. 
 
In all it was a trip full of delicious food, amazing nature, quirky stops, games games and more games…

…and ROOOOOCKS!!!!!!!