Day 28

It sprinkled on and off most of the morning.  I got up around 8:30am and got put together for the day.  Then I propped up the back of my cot and worked on a hat I’ve been crocheting.  I pulled in apart for the fourth and fifth time and then finally got a size and shape I was happy with.

Jeremiah finally got out of bed at noon.  His argument was the rain and we couldn’t cook breakfast in the tent because of Mom’s opinions.  True.  I’d been stubbornly refusing to bother him or say anything about it.  Meanwhile, Mom had been dropped cheery, not-so-subtle hints most of the morning that she was hungry and we needed to get our day started.

I followed Jeremiah up to the picnic table and I ate the last 5 slices of raisin bread while he lit the fire.  We had eggs, bacon, and toast around 1:30. 

Love some good homegrown eggs.

I missed one slice of bacon in the package and found it later when I was about to throw it away.  Horrors.  Jeremiah cooked it over the top of the wash water.  :)  Silly man.  

Joshua was wanting to wait til the tent was dry to pack it up, but it just wasn’t good drying weather.  I packed the car while Jeremiah gathered stove fuel from the hillside.

A great shoe, for just about anything.  Pretty good with water too!
No wet socks yet even when I was sure I'd done it.

An SUV stopped in.  The driver got out and started chatting with us and playing with the dogs while one of the other guys used the bathroom.  One of them was from Potosi, MO and had gone to high school in Salem.  They now lived in the Yaak.  He was playing tough.  Mom says, “We hear you guys are pretty nice up there.”  “Yeah, we try not to shoot too many people  The one we do, we shoot and shovel, and no one ever knows about it, but we try to be nice to outsiders.”  He had  a straight face.  Mom and I laughed at him.  He assured us we were okay because we had dogs.  His wife showed us a picture of their dog, a Pyrenees timber wolf cross.  Crazy I tell you.  I asked about all the people who had pulled in and then turned around and left.  He said this was a popular hunting campsite.  We told him we were headed to Yaak and he encouraged us to stop in at the Yaaktober Fest.  Good mountain music, he said.

The guys got the tent packed up while Mom and I were talking and we got on the road shortly thereafter, around 3:30pm.  We drove into Yaak.

It had a one little tiny school on the outskirts of town.  Seven kids there we found out later.  

We stopped in at the mercantile/bar.  The Yaaktober Fest was out back.  There were a handful of vendors set up and some good music, and a lot of people who’d had a little too much.  They pretty much stuck to the porch of the bar so it wasn’t awkward or anything.  

There was a lady from Libby, MT selling alpaca yarn and outerwear.  I bought 100 yards of silver yarn from her.  I really liked the natural color.  She said she’d send me a pattern for some of the gloves she was selling and check if she had any more roving of that color.  She had had a polish Arab so we horse talked for a bit. 

Next was a potter.  Her and her husband were originally from Indiana.  She had sold most of her wares, but had mugs and some rectangular platters left.  Some of them had impressions and other had raised piping designs on them.  I don’t recall what she told me the technique was called.  

After that was  guy who had bellows with antler tips, leather sides fastened to wood-burned top and bottom with brass tacks.  Very classy.  His wife had strung sinew and bead designs on antlers and horse shoes.  Cool, but not so classy.  :)

Then there was a table to raise support for the school.  They had baked goods, calendars, and wearables.  The school went to the 8th grade.  The lady running the table was mother to 3 of the 7 children.  She confirmed that there were more kids than that around, but that most of the families homeschooled.  

H.A. Brewing from Eureka was there with a sample table.  

Yaak Falls

We continued on to Troy where we got gas again.  We had a choice between camping at Ross Creek Cedars Bad Medicine Campground or going through Libby down to the other side of the Cabinet Mountains and camping at Lake Creek Campground.  Mom and I wanted to see the cedars and Libby in the daytime and Lake Creek was much further away.  It was sunset.  So we chose Ross Creek.  Joshua was voting to drive to Moscow, ID, get a hotel, and go to Christ Church in the morning.  Mom had mentioned that as a possibility earlier in the day, but we had agreed Moscow would fit in better with travel plans on the following Sunday.

We got to the Cedars and didn’t really like the campground.  The host was there which meant we’d have to stay more on top of the dogs, and there was no place other than Bull Lake to get water.  Jeremiah holds out for good, fast-moving, clear streams.  We were sitting at the entrance near the sign talking about it for a while.  Two guys came from the host site to heck on us.  I told them we were just trying to figure out where we wanted to camp and having a family discussion about it.  “There aren’t too many choices.  And no, the water isn’t on.”  He was rather gruff.

We knew we didn’t want to camp there based on the water issue and Joshua’s opinions, so we continued discussing options as we drove up to the cedars so we wouldn’t be sitting in the campground worrying them.  Yeah, it was dark, but we didn’t have a plan yet.  It was past 9pm, but there was a truck up there.  Shorter after, 3 people straggled out of the wooded trail.  One went back in after the third one.   They turned a bunch of circles in the parking lot and left.  Weird.

But then again, here we were.  Weird.  No room to judge.  By this time we were almost agreed to go to the other side of the mountains, maybe go back to Libby in the morning for church.  Joshua was still talking about Moscow.  He had a bad feeling about camping at the cedars.  Jeremiah decided to walk the trail to see the trees and look for a creek.  I went with him and we went packing.  Some guy had told us the cedars up there were as wide as a car was long.  Mom said she’d come looking for us in 5 minutes.  We were gone 25 minutes as the trail was almost a mile long with several forks in it.  We had a disagreement on the direction of the parking lot when we were about halfway in.  Sometimes I wonder about Jeremiah’s orienteering skills.  Though it is quite true that we’ve had several miscommunications where we were actually agreeing with each other.  

It was dark and wet with moss hanging down from the trees, the tendrils of uprooted trees reaching for … something.  In general kinda creepy.  And really awesome!  Those trees were huge!!!!  Now I know what the cedars of Lebanon must have been like!  And to think they cut those hunks down, loaded them on ships and used them for palaces and the temple.  Wow!

A lot happened that night, but suffice it to say we decided to drive to Moscow around 1am.  Jeremiah was wide awake by this point and we continued our discussion of the doctrinal and theological implications, and anecdotal evidence relating to this situation.  We stopped at a rest stop near Troy and dug out some peanut butter and jelly fixings for dinner.  I fell asleep again shortly after crossing the Idaho border.