Beautiful Downtown Wallace, Idaho

(Frank) We spent the last two days in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. It’s not the smallest town in the west, but it’s a close second to Wallace. We ended up in Bonners after driving west out of Glacier National Park. Upon arrival we both just sort of “crashed.” Because Blue Lake RV Park seemed very quiet and restful we decided to extend our stay for an extra day to unwind, rewind, re-boot, and recoup. That was before we realized a train track was 150 yards from the camp. Gee, trains are really noisy! Ask me how I know.




The high point of the two days was us doing laundry at a very nice Laundromat and each of us getting our hairs cut at appropriately gender-specific hair cutting places. My barber shop was called the “Barber Ship” and looked like a boat about to founder. Cheryl’s Beauty Shop was more traditional and very nice. The funny coincidence was that each of our stylists, mine and hers, had a father who “used to ride a Norton.” We think they might be sisters, but don’t know for sure and will never find out.

As I was de-camping Ali-the-Gator this morning, the guy from the camper next to us came over for some small talk and mentioned that his hobby was model trains and real trains and that he was heading for Wallace, Idaho the day after next day just to visit the Great Northern RR Line Museum located there. He described it as “Huge” and “Loaded with neat GNRR antiquities.” Since I like old trains and Cheryl LOVES old trains, we promptly changed our day’s destination from Grand Coulee Dam, Washington, to Wallace, Idaho. The two destinations are in direct opposite directions of each other, but I figured a little backtracking wouldn’t really hurt us. Well . . .

Boy is he going to be surprised!!!! The miniscule museum resides in a very small restored train station. It takes a grand total of 20 minutes to “do” the whole thing. That’s it. The rest of the town can be “done” in another 20 minutes. We did have a very nice dinner at a local restaurant, but now we are sitting in the local no-name-RV park wondering a) what to do next, and b) how did this happen to us?

Oh well, tomorrow we’ll make it to Grand Coulee unless Homer’s Sirens lure us to some other God-forsaken small town black hole. Be sure to catch the next installment of Frank & Cheryl’s Excellent Western Odyssey.

(Cheryl) Frank forgot to mention we visited the Bordello Museum, and found it just as whelming as the train museum. He also forgot to say that the no-name-RV-park is on the road to the local mine with a constant stream of HUGE dump trucks coming and going (easily as noisy as the Bonners Ferry Choo-Choo’s). Last, but in no way least, the 90 degree temperature, accompanied by 150 percent humidity makes walking around town a lot like taking a sweat shower. I told Frank, “We’re paying our trailer dues.” He knew exactly what I meant because when he first started taking me out on the motorcycle he said, “Always remember and never forget, riding in the rain pays the dues for all the sunny days.”

Let’s hope our dues are paid in full at this point and tomorrow is once again a sunny day.

Love, Homer, Marge and Bart