Inland Northwest 2021
Friday, June 18: Olmstead Place Historical State Park
Saturday, June 19: Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes
Saturday, June 19: Pulaski Tunnel Trail
Sunday, June 20: Father's Day Family Gathering
Monday, June 21: Breakfast at Red Light Garage
Monday, June 21: Mount Spokane State Park
Monday, June 21:
On Friday morning, I drove the car to drop Shobhit off at work in Northgate (Seattle) before his shift began at 9:30. I drove to the Costco in Issaquah to fill up on gas with the hopes of the tank lasting until the Costco in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (it did), and was leaving there by 9:45 a.m. Dad and Sherri left Olympia just a bit earlier than I left Seattle, so we aimed to arrive at Olmstead Place Historial State Park outside Ellensburg in Central Washington, around the same time. The buildings in the distance in this photo are part of the homestead preserved since 1875, before decades of farming first beef and then dairy, before the land was donated to State Parks in 1968.
Under normal circumstance you can schedule a tour of the several old buildings, but unsurprisingly they were not on offer on this day. Dad and Sherri arrived around 11:45, maybe ten or 15 minutes after I did; we had a picnic lunch and then Dad and I walked around the park exploring a bit while Sherri read a novel.
I immediately decided I would make a note to save this photo for when I inevitably make a visual tribute to my dad after he's gone. Kim McQuilkin, going into the great beyond.
Too soon?
Saturday, June 19: Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes
Hooray! After managing two different bike rides with Dad each year in both 2018 and 2019, we couldn't manage any bike rides at all in 2020—but, already, we've managed our second bike ride in 2021!
Most of you probably won't remember this, but Shobhit and I walked a couple of miles on this trail when we visited Wallace, Idaho last year, due east from Hercules Inn, passing right by my mom's house. I decided then that I would really like to do an actual bike ride on it, and the ideal person to do it with me was my dad. What better idea than that, after the passing of my mom last year, but with my brother and nephews still there to visit? This was a big part of how the idea came to be for Dad and Sherri and me to make our first concurrent visit there.
To recap: the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes runs 73 miles across the Idaho Panhandle between Plummer, Idaho, maybe 10 miles from the Washington State Line, and Mullan, Idaho, which is eight miles east of Wallace and six miles from the Montana state line. Dad and I rode the trail from our hotel in Wallace to Mullan and back, totalling about a 15-mile distance round trip. For the first time, I was in better shape than Dad on a bike ride, and he commented more than once how much that irritated him. I mean, sure he could be in better shape, but he's also 65 years old. Cut yourself some slack, Dad; you're an old now!
Anyway, Dad and I crossed a beautiful bridge over the South Fork Coeur d'Alene River that could not have been any more than a tenth of a mile further up the path than Shobhit and I had turned back on our walk last year. Oops.
And then, on our way back, after stopping on the path so Dad could take a picture of the Wallace City Limit sign, this bizarre trailer of mid-morning day drinkers (this shot was taken at 9:48 a.m.; they can also be seen in this distance in my shot of Dad taking his picture), leaving us completely baffled. What were they doing on the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes, where there are regular signs stating "no motorized vehicles"?
It took a while, but I figured it out. Dad and Sherri had already noticed a carnival set up through maybe three blocks of the center of town shortly after we arrived; my brother, Christopher, kept telling it was "Gyro Days"—but he kept pronouncing it yeero, like the Greek sandwich. If you're wondering why in the world there would be a yeero festival in the rural Idaho panhandle, your instincts would be on the right track: I looked it up, and it's "Gyro" pronounced as in "gyroscope," named after the Wallace Gyro Club for which the carnival is named, traditionally on the same weekend as the "Lead Creek Derby," now in its 79th year after being canceled in 2020, for the first time since its inception in 1942.
From the Shoshone News Press article about this year’s event:
Saturday starts the Lead Creek Derby as the ball drops at noon at the Last Chance Bridge in Mullan. The honor of dropping the ball in the creek this year is being given to a deserving local citizen.
After the ball drops, people get on bikes, Jeeps, cars, trucks or skateboards and follow the ball to Wallace. The large ball floating down the creek is a unique sight to see for everyone. The crowd celebrates the entire way down the creek as the Gyros help make sure the ball does not get hung up on trees or shrubs. Once in Wallace, the large crowd, the carnival, the winners and all the associated festivities combine for a terrific time.
The big beach ball type ball they use can actually be seen on the back of the truck pulling the trailer of day drinkers in this photo, so it was clearly part of the weekend festivities. They must have been transporting the ball to Mullan via the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes bike path.
The banner for the festival in town . . . which the wind clearly twisted up, and no one bothered to fix it all weekend. It clearly begins with "78th Annual," though, which would have been the number used in . . . 2019. Maybe they thought no one would notice?
I took a brief walk to the store to get half & half while my dad took a nap after the bike ride, getting my photos of the carnival in the process. On the way back, I got this very colorful shot of a small park in the middle of town, Samuels Park. This is actually one of my favorite shots from the entire weekend.
Saturday, June 19: Pulaski Tunnel Trail
Another repeat of something I attempted with Shobhit last year, but we turned around after getting in only about 3/4 of a mile on the trail, both because it was later in the evening and starting to get dark, and at the time Shobhit and I only had sandals on. I made sure I had laced shoes this time!
Pictured here is West Fork Placer Creek, alongside which the 2-mile trail to a mine entrance known as Pulaski Tunnel. Unfortunately, although Dad and I doubled the distance Shobhit and I covered, we still didn't make it the full two miles in, and Dad had us turn back right at about the 1.5-mile mark, as he was too worried about Sherri being left alone and possibly bored (she later told us we should have done the whole trail: "Go back and do the whole thing!" she quipped). I'll just have to do it again, on my third attempt during my next visit. I'm going to see that damned tunnel if it takes as long as I live!
The trail also features a lot of signs and information about a historic 1910 fire—this portion of a tree preserved from it, now 111 years old, quite impressed us that it was still there, even this much intact. Dad told me, after he considered it for a minute, that cedar lasts a long time so I guess it makes sense. (This was a new sight for me on the trail, on the portion I had not previously walked with Shobhit last year.)
Shortly after my brother got off work on Saturday, we took him and his three boys out for dinner. First we tried the popular Wallace place called City Limits Pub & Grill, but then discovered that, thanks to the weekend festivities, they were slammed and there was a 45-minute wait. So then I found a highly-rated restaurant over in Kellogg, the town 12 miles west, called Radio Brewing Company. They were just opening for dinner at 5:00, did not require reservations, and there was no wait, and so off we went.
On Friday, as has long been Shobhit's and my custom, I picked up pizzas for dinner at the Costco in Coeur d'Alene. At Radio Brewing, I decided to buy a dinner to go for Bill, Mom's widowed husband—honestly, it would have supremely awkward for him to have joined us with Dad and Sherri, but Bill never leaves the house anyway and he never wanted to even before Mom died; that's long been par or the course with him. (I don't want you to think anyone was deliberately excluding him in any way.) So when I got up to order and pay for Bill's meal at the bar, I went ahead and covered the bill for everyone. Sherri was particularly taken aback by that, later calling me "Mister Money Bags over here," but: Shobhit and I typically provided the bulk of the food in the past when it was just us visiting, and those visits typically did not include my youngest two nephews who are usually with their mom in Spokane; and the dinner party was seven people (not counting Bill) and I did not want Dad and Sherri to feel compelled to spring for everyone, especially when they were providing food and cooking for everyone the next day on Father's Day. To me, this was only fair.
Anyway! Back to Bill. When we got back to the hotel after dinner, I took the car over to the house to bring Bill his takeout dinner, and I was quite happy to see that he was very chatty and seemed genuinely happy to see me. It should be noted that, the last time I saw Bill was when Shobhit and I visited over the first weekend of August last year; COVID was still so much of a concern that we only ever ate together outside and I never went inside the house; and this was all of one month after Mom's passing deeply devastated and gutted him. I only saw him briefly when he came outside to eat some of the pizza we brought. To be honest, I didn't see him for a much longer period of time this time, but I had a sustained, engaging, direct conversation with him in a way that never happened last year—even then, I only saw him from a bit of a distance, as the rest of us sat on blankets in the grass but he used the garbage can lid like a countertop for his plate (uh . . . don't ask. I didn't). During this conversation, I learned that Bill has a new caregiver, and she had created this quite lovely little display for my mom's canister of ashes, seen in the photo above. I didn't get a chance to see that last year either, so this was basically my first time visiting Mom's remains. I quite liked that I got to see it this way, with a subtly colorful blue theme.
Sunday, June 20: Father's Day Family Gathering
Dad and Sherri invited Christopher and the boys over to their room at the Hercules Inn for French Toast breakfast before they went to church. I guess I ironically spent Father's Day weekend impressing Sherri: she was so impressed that I kept washing dishes that she had to take a picture of me doing it. To be fair, this was not something I did often in the past—but, this time it came quite naturally; at home I've come to hate seeing dirty dishes stacked in the sink so much, I regularly wash everything after cooking before I even eat. The kitchen sink must be empty!
I'll tell you what I really, really hate about this picture. MY FUCKING CHIN. Thanks a lot, Dad! Or I guess more accurately, thanks a lot Grandma McQuilkin, who I like remarkably like in this photo (eventually my pronouns will just be narrowed down to "grandma"). Or even more accurately, thanks a lot, Grandma Furister! Which one of those assholes started this weak chin shit, anyway? It's their fault I now have to stipulate in all my contracts that I can only be photographed from directly in front of my face. Goddammit!
Father's Day Family Portrait! The only people missing here are my niece Becca and her husband Tyler, who could not get time off work this weekend and came to visit my brother last weekend instead. This photo happened because I requested it. My brother always complains when he's asked to pose for photos like this. Suck it up, Christopher! Also, it cracks me up that this was on Father's Day; Sherri is in the central position in this shot; and Dad is barely visible in the very back, looking like a grump.
Sherri suggested this one, and I'm very glad she did. I love this shot. My brother's ZZ Top beard notwithstanding.
Sunset view from my second-floor Hercules Inn unit window, after a lovely day of hanging out with family. Dad and Sherri had bought a bunch of fried chicken to feed everyone dinner from the Wal-Mart in Smelterville, Idaho; I brought my own veggie burger patty to make myself a burger. It was my first time trying a new sample from work, The Very Good Butchers vegan Smokin' Burger. I did have the wherewithal to bring a burger bun but for some reason spaced any condiments; thankfully Dad and Sherri had mayonnaise and an onion I could get a slice from and sauté next to the patty. This actually made it much easier to consider the flavor ot the patty itself, and it was delicious.
Monday, June 21: Breakfast at Red Light Garage
For a town of an estimated 782 people, Wallace actually has a lot of restaurants and bars. Possibly my favorite is Red Light Garage, owned by the same older couple who run the Hercules Inn—there's so charmingly non-technical, they have no idea how to update their own website to reflect rate increases at the Hercules Inn; and Jamie, the husband (he can barely be seen in the red shirt to the right in this photo), just answers his home phone with "Hello?" when you call the number listed as the contact for the Inn. (I had to warn my dad about this for when he made his reservation; it's always a little jarring as you're not sure if you called the right place.) Anyway, the Red Light Garage is packed with truly random stuff, and it was fun in a new way to eat there with my dad, who is old enough to remember a lot of the stuff as being more common many years ago—such as the hanging Budweiser carousel (seen to the left of the red post, near the top of the frame), or the old-school gas can sitting on the shelf next to him at our booth, which I guess you used to have to puncture with a metal spout in order to get the gas out.
Anyway, Dad kind of cracked up when he noticed that rifle sitting next to one of the old men sitting there near us (you can see it in the above shot). I don't think the guy heard him, but he still just a few minutes later felt compelled to tell Dad, "This is a BB gun." Dad was like, "Oh, okay." And then the old man added, "I just didn't want you to go home saying 'This guy in the Idaho panhandle ate breakfast with his gun!" I guess he wanted to show the BB gun to his friends for some reason.
Monday, June 21: Mount Spokane State Park
And yet a third thing I had done with Shobhit last year that I recommended to Dad and Sherri: the spectacular panoramic view at the summit of Mount Spokane. I parked Shobhit's car and then rode up the mountain with Dad and Sherri in their car, which made Shobhit feel better as that had been where Shobhit's car had broken down on our way back down the mountain last year. (I had no problems with the car this year; I gave Shobhit my bus pass to take transit to work all weekend.)
I had warned Dad and Sherri about the narrow road in the last stretch up to the summit, approaching 5,886 feet elevation with no guard rails alongside the road switchbacking up steep hills. At first Sherri was like, "We've been on worse roads than this." And then when we were rounding the last turns, she stopped being able to look at the view from the car window after she said, "Oh, holy shit!" At least we were soon at the top then, and could get out of the car and walk around a bit.
I really can't recommend experiencing this spot enough. It might be my new favorite spot in the entire Spokane area. Of course, my list of "favorite spots" in and around Spokane is pretty limited, but that's beside the point!
Near the "Vista House" right by the summit of Mount Spokane: three visible "cairns" (stacks of rocks) in this photo. Sherri wanted a photo for my sister, Angel, who is kind of into this kind of stuff. Side note: I couldn't remember the word "cairn," and when I Googled to figure it out, I actually found several links to pages explaining why you actually shouldn't do this. Apparently they disrupt natural habitats.
Monday, June 21:
Last stop meetup with Dad and Sherri on the way home, before we later parted ways so they could return home to Olympia and I could return home to Seattle. This is right by Vantage on the Columbia River, and made the third Washington State Park I visited on this weekend trip—I'm really getting my money's worth out of that Discover Pass! (They cost $30 for the entire year, whereas a single day pass is $10.) The vast majority of Washington State Park entry signs have the same basic, recognizable design—I like them all, but also like when they deviate, and I particularly liked this one.
After Dad and Sherri and I had our last picnic lunch together (side note: driving south through Spokane from Mount Spokane is a ridiculous pain in the ass, fuck that city—anyway I stopped at two places while driving through, once to pick up a sandwich for this lunch and once to get an iced chai), I used what little time I had there to walk around and get a few photos. On this particular spot, just below the Ginkgo Petrified Forest Museum, are the Vantage Petroglyphs, moved here from their original spot about a mile upriver that is now under the waters of the Wanapum Reservoir. I'm having a hard time finding a site that dates them; all I know is they were "carved centuries ago."
Apparently, according to Dad, there is an area further up the freeway where you can walk trails and find other specimens of petrified wood, but it was too hot on this day and I was presed for time as it was; I did not get home until 7:00 p.m.
[Full photo set can be viewed on Flickr here.]
[posted 9:23 pm]
