Day 64 (July 17). Coeur d’Alene and Clarkia

From: Bonners Ferry, ID

To: Lewiston, ID

Miles today: 242

Total miles: 13382

Like many people, when I think of Idaho, I think of two things:  (1) Famous Potatoes, and (2) Heavily Armed Survivalists.  I hadn’t seen either thus far, but I have read that the town of Coeur d’Alene, in the northern tip, was ground zero for the militia movement. I thought I would go have a look around. 

After an unsuccessful attempt to get some service for the cycle (the brake pads are low, and the air filter has not been changed in ages; the guys at the shop felt bad about not having the parts in stock), I drove to downtown.  The town’s history, which I learned from their museum, is similar to all other towns up here; first the fur traders, then the gold and silver hunters, then the railroads, and now a lot of timber.  But Coeur d’Alene, unlike most of the others, has been primarily a tourist town for a hundred years.  This is primarily because it is located on a large natural lake of the same name as the town; people like big lakes.  There is even a beach. 

The origin of the lake is itself fascinating (to me, at least).  When the great glacial lake Missoula (similar to Lake Agassiz that I discussed weeks ago) burst its ice dam, the water tore through Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, leaving behind the fabulous Scablands among other geological features.  In northern Idaho, the water not only tore up the river valley it flowed down, it dumped huge amounts of sediment along its banks, which in turn acted as dams to several major tributaries.  These dammed rivers became lakes, one of which is Lake Coeur d’Alene.  As a result of this lake, the town has been a tourist magnet for as long as there have been tourists. 

I looked around the parking lot near the beach and museum – looking for, I admit, militant bumper stickers – but found none, perhaps because none of the cars parked in the downtown region were from Idaho!  The downtown region itself seemed very liberal and trendy; I think a Chablis-drinking, brie-eating metrosexual would have felt right at home there.  No one I saw was packing heat, at least not openly.  (I guess that would scare off the tourists.) On the whole, I left with a favorable impression of, at least, downtown “militia central.”

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.  Left: typical downtown street.  Right: the beach on the lake.

One of the places I have always wanted to visit if I was ever driving through Idaho is a quarry near the village of Clarkia, where you can dig your own Miocene-era fossil leaves.  To get there, you have to go east on I-90 for about 20 miles, and then take ID 3 south.  This road does not get back to the main traffic channels for about 150 miles, where it joined US 12 which takes you to the town of Lewiston (named for Lewis and Clark, as so many things around here are). I should have suspected that this might be a really great motorcycling road, but did not.  If there is a list of the top 100 motorcycling roads in the US, ID 3 is surely among them.  Like yesterday’s drive, it is beautiful winding road through attractive scenery; a road twisty enough to engage you completely but not so much as to be scary, and surrounded by scenery that did not make your jaw drop but that filled you with a sense of joy.  The warm, sunny day made everything better.

Idaho Route 3

About this quarry: I had first heard of it in an essay by Stephen Jay Gould called “Magnolias from Moscow.”  The city he is referring to is Moscow, Idaho, which is near Clarkia and where the first academics to look at the fossils discovered there were based. Still, the title gives the proper impression: a 20-million year old pond that became filled with sediment was much warmer than Idaho is today, and many sub-tropical plants were growing there (including Magnolias). The guy who owned the land discovered it when he was using a bulldozer and backhoe to build a dirt bike course.  Gould wrote that essay about twenty years ago now, but the place is still operating – both the dirt track and the quarry – although the guy currently running the place said that times were pretty tough.  Anyway, the man’s 10-year-old son led me down the short dirt path to the quarry, and it was everything I hoped for. I spent a couple of hours there, a good deal of it talking to the boy, who could name every species we found.  I asked him if he had thought about being a paleontologist; he not only knew what the word meant, he said that yes, he had given that a lot of thought. However, he said, his dad (who I thought was pretty bright himself) said that he attended one day of college at the University of Idaho and quit, so college may not be in the cards for this guy.  I wish him all of them all the best.

Left: the Miocene-era quarry at Clarkia; the great kid who prepared the fossil leaf that I now possess.

The quarry itself was amazing.  Small and  compact, you could not help but find fossils.  The only question was how many and how good.  I packed up a bunch of rocks, as many as I thought I could fit in the few remaining spaces on the cycle, and headed down the rest of beautiful ID 3 until it ended near Lewiston, where I am now.