North Idaho

Today we are in Couer d'Alene and went to another fair.
Did your Granny have one of these?
  Would she love to see a current Maytag with all the fancy cycles? 

Then we went to the horses log dance.  Neither of us have ever seen this before and don't know exactly what it's called, but these beautiful teams of horses pull two logs in and out between the orange cones, always staying between the rope borders.  They have to make really tight turns and it's a deduction if they hit a cone.  Winning is based on speed and accuracy.  It was fun.
From the stands.  With popcorn.

 

Then came the pulling contest.  The sled is loaded with ever-increasing weight and the teams pull it for 15 feet.  When all others have given up, the winner is the team still standing.  Today the final weight was 7500 pounds, more than double the combined weight of the horses! 

In real life these beauties are used for farming and logging and you can see how powerful they can be.

Butter or sour cream?

Do you see Porterhouse or T-Bone?

 

Self explanatory.

Downtown Couer d'Alene is very pretty.  Clean and friendly, lots of hanging baskets of petunias, sculptures on nearly every corner,  and this humongous boardwalk.

 

Just a little bit more

Poor photo skills, but interesting facts.
And it proves that the Canadians have a pretty good sense of humor, eh?

 

 

 

There are twenty-four of these Large Animal Bridges to help the creatures get over the highway.
How do they know?  We didn't see any moose in traffic control uniforms.

Above is a bit more information from the Canadian Rockies which I had a tough time posting with a poor internet connection.

Now it's Friday and we are in Couer d'Alene, Idaho.  Today was driving from Whitefish with a stop in Wallace for lunch.  Al wants me to tell you about a retired miner we met there.  He worked in the Sunshine silver mine for 38 years as a hoist operator, and left us with these statistics:  the bottom of the mine is 3800 feet below sea level;  the surface temperature of the rocks is 168 degrees;  the relative humidity in the  mine is 238%;  the elevator ascends with ore at a rate of 2,000 feet per minute, and lifts men at 800 feet per minute.  (He says the average building elevator is 200 feet per minute, but I didn't verify any of this.)
 There were five brothels in Wallace and he told us that when the last one locked their door
 they put up a sign that said "Closed.  Beat it."  

What Color is your fish?

This is a very pleasant town, with tons of civic pride.  It's clean and pretty and very tourist-friendly.  Last night we went to the Farmers Market, scored some beautiful produce,
 and wandered around the town for a while. Cocktails might have been involved.

 

Today we went to the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park World Heritage Site, which in 1932 the governments of Canada and the United Stated linked to form the world's first International park.  We didn't get to the Canada side this time, but enjoyed the magnificence of the American side, which included crossing that ubiquitous Continental Divide a few times.     

 

 

 

My eyes are weary now from all that beauty, so I have to rest them with some knitting.

Information

 

Just a bit of reading so you can learn all about the mountains and how they got there.
There won't be a quiz. 

 

 

 

 

Fair Fare

Friday we went to the fair with Peter and Kim.

A highlight was the pig wrestling.  In a mud pit.  With wet pigs.
There were teams of four, from little tykes to grown women, with the objective of getting the pig butt first into a barrel.  The pigs got bigger and the barrel got taller with each age group. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those VFW guys know how to do it right.
What's not to love when you see the words "dipped in butter"?

What's a fair without a rodeo?

 

 

These mountains rock

 

 

 

More of the Icefields Parkway, but nothing more to say about it.  Looking is enough.
(Except for those peskly little spots that have developed in my camera, which will be going to the hospital for repairs.  Too bad it's not same-day surgery, but has to be sent to Texas if I want it to be covered under warranty.) 

Icefields Parkway

It's really Highway 93 from Lake Louise/Banff to Jasper (or vice versa if you turn the map upside down) but you can easily see why it's called the Icefields Parkway.  Just when you think you've seen every glacier in the world, navigate the next turn and there is another one!  It's magnificent.

Those are busloads of people taking the expensive tour to walk on one of the biggest and flattest glaciers, which used to go all the way across the road and filled what is now the visitor center and parking lot.  Everywhere we got they have told us how big the glaciers used to be.
  Could that have been the Ice Age?

 

 

Dandy Lions

So there we were, driving along the Icefields Highway in the Canadian Rockies, millions, no billions, of fuzzy white flowers.  Not flowers at all, but dandelions gone to fluff.  It almost looked like snow.    No wonder these suckers spread so rapidly and go so many places.  Just look!

 

Next time we'll look at some of the amazing glaciers.