Twas a perfect ending to a highly unusual month. The Pack River evening-trip saga continued last night when Bill was off at Lightning Creek near Clark Fork, fishing with Willie and Andrew.
Andrew, his wife Alicia and their daughter Emma are here from Seattle for the week. Andrew, Alicia and Debbie all graduated together from Boise High School.
Since the marriage of William Love III and Deborah Williams of Boise in which both Andrew and Alicia participated, we've seen them at least once each year.
Andrew, who works at Boeing, loves to fish, so he's enjoying the North Idaho experience with the two William Love's.
While Alicia, Emma and Debbie were visiting, my sisters and I headed for Upper Pack River.
Since Barbara and Laurie had never been on the side roads, we started with Caribou Creek, same place where Bill and I had been the night before when the storm came up.
Well, the tree that blocked the road to Caribou Lodge during Tuesday night's storm, had been removed, so we headed up that way. The results of that decision were nothing short of glorious.
A gate leading into a logging job on an open hillside hung open, tempting us to enter at our own risk. There is a bit of a risk, most likely in the day time when the loggers are working.
Last evening, just before sunset though, all was quiet on that western front where we beheld an almost completely unobstructed view of the magnificent Selkirk Ridge.
Nice to have a few trees jutting upward from the slope below, as they make for nice photo framing. And, the fireweed, simply astounding!
As we exited the car with cameras in hand, an overpowering sense of awe brought on silence among us three sisters. We simply walked the road, stopped to snap our individual photos and let the drop-dead gorgeous view do the talking.
I did take a moment to point out Gunsight Peak to Laurie. After all, it's been noted to me several times over the years from different angles in Bonner and Boundary County by Bill who always loves to share his knowledge of most of the peaks in North Idaho.
I have a feeling from last night forth Laurie will always recognize Gun Shot Peak and maybe have the opportunity to share the tidbit from her own Selkirk primer.
Next to the sheer beauty we witnessed from the mountain side and around the bend where a full moon dominated the sky above Lake Pend Oreille comes the utter joy of watching my sisters see some of our backwoods wonders for the first time AND react, creating their own pictorial chronicles to share.
Yup, nothing beats that.
Along with the scenery, we enjoyed watching a mule deer doe nibbling on shrubs alongside the road. She could have cared less whether about the cameras clicking inside the car that had rolled to a stop to watch her eat her dinner.
It was a two-bunny night as we saw two snowshoe rabbits race from the road in front of us. The night before had been a three-bunny night.
We've come to the conclusion that this must be the seven-year cycle for snow shoe rabbits, as they've made appearances on nearly every trek we've taken this spring and summer.
It was too dark and I have too much respect (for what a mama moose may do) for us to stop and take pictures of the mama moose and her very young baby who trotted into the bushes off the road in front of us as we came back off the mountain.
I'd say the last day of June, with a garden that looks like August, and the incomparable beauty we saw in the mountains last night, turned out to be a GRAND FINALE to an unseasonable month which we'll remember for a long, long time.
I'm hoping July settles down and just acts like July, with no disasters destroying one ounce of North Idaho's spectacular beauty.
Happy Wednesday.
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